Director, Forward Deployed Engineering - Manufacturing
Hadrian Automation · Torrance, CA
- Level
- Director+
- Team
- Manufacturing
- Degree
- Required
- Experience asked
- 8+ years
- Industry
- Industrial
- Posted
- 9 days ago
The role in 30 seconds
A director-level manufacturing role at Hadrian Automation (industrial) in Torrance, CA.
- They ask for
- 8+ years · degree required
- Tools it names
- Robotics, Welding, Casting
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of November 2, 2026
Manufacturing Engineer roles in California: typical posted base $115k–$169k.
Median of the low and high ends of 150 live postings that list pay, out of 398 manufacturing engineer openings in California, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
California plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 397 other live manufacturing postings in California.
- Base pay
- Not listed in this posting
- Experience asked
- More than usual (8+ vs 5+)
Typical $110k–$159k, from 130 postings that list pay.
Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.
Skills these teams ask for most
- Tooling 52%
- ✓ New product launch 47%
- Root cause 38%
- Automation 34%
- Machining 27%
- CATIA / NX 27%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
Stands out: this posting asks for Casting, which few similar roles mention. If you have it, lead with it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.
- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Manufacturing team at Hadrian Automation
We found 2 people at this company and state: 1 in this kind of role, 1 leaders. Engineers who joined in the last year or two reply the most. See them ↓
- 2
Send a short, curious note
One real question about their work. No favors yet. Each person gets a different note, written for this role.
Write to Scott → (free) - 3
Turn a reply into a short call
Questions worth asking about this team:
- What does a normal week look like on your team?
- Is the work mostly new product launches or sustaining existing lines?
- How much time do you spend on the floor versus at a desk?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
- 4
Apply with someone vouching for you
If the call went well, ask whether they’d pass your résumé to the hiring manager. Send your résumé link, apply that day, and let them know.
- 5
Bring proof to the interview
One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.
This plant: Hadrian Automation in Torrance
3 other open roles at this site · 2 people we found in manufacturing roles at Hadrian Automation.
- Manufacturing Engineer, Welding · Manufacturing
- Manufacturing Engineer, Model-Based Definition · Manufacturing
- Manufacturing Engineer, Tube & Pipe · Manufacturing
Full description from Hadrian AutomationAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
Key Responsibilities
- ◆Represent Hadrian with customers day to day: Own the technical relationship with customer engineering, program, and leadership teams. Run working sessions, present findings and recommendations, handle hard questions and pushback in the room, and follow up with clear, accurate written communication. Every interaction should leave the customer more confident in Hadrian.
- ◆Discover before you design: Embed with customers to observe their operations, map processes, constraints, and pain points, and interview stakeholders from the shop floor to program leadership. Build a clear, evidence-based picture of the real need before any solution is on the table.
- ◆Shape the solution: Fold what you learn into a solution that maximizes customer output and moves Hadrian toward what we are building. Hold an accurate picture of current capability and roadmap, and steer each engagement to the point where those two goals reinforce each other, favoring existing capabilities over new obligations.
- ◆Partner with Customer Programs: Operate on a dotted line to Customer Programs as their forward deployed engineering arm, bringing technical judgment into every engagement from first conversation through commitment.
- ◆Lead the forward deployed engineering team: Build, manage, and develop a technical team that engages directly with customers during new program scoping. Set the standard for how the team runs discovery, evaluates opportunities, and communicates with customers in a technical, credible, low-ego way.
- ◆Scope new customer engagements: Own the manufacturing scoping of new engagements: review requirements, drawings, specifications, tolerances, materials, and volumes, and define a manufacturing solution that Hadrian can commit to with confidence.
- ◆Evaluate before you promise: Bring a first-principles engineering mindset to every engagement. Understand the problem and the constraints before proposing or committing to a solution, so that what we sign up for is real and deliverable.
- ◆Hand off cleanly to Build Engineering: Ensure every commitment is scoped so that the Build Engineering organization can deliver it: clear product definition, make-vs-buy posture, process capability requirements, and a manufacturing plan that stands up to execution.
- ◆Drive leverage, not one-offs: Recognize recurring customer patterns and turn them into repeatable scoping approaches and reusable solution templates, so the function scales with the business instead of scaling headcount linearly.
Required Qualifications
- ✓Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, Manufacturing, or a related engineering field and 8+ years of manufacturing or manufacturing engineering experience, or 12+ years of that experience without a degree.
- ✓3+ years managing technical teams (direct reports).
- ✓Experience in a customer-facing technical role (e.g., applications, field or sales engineering, program engineering, or consulting), including presenting technical recommendations to customer engineering and program leadership.
- ✓Proven ability to lead a technical team in a customer-facing capacity, translating between customer
requirements
and manufacturing reality.
- ✓Demonstrated ability to
Show full description ↓Show less ↑
Hadrian - Manufacturing the Future
Hadrian is building autonomous factories to reindustrialize America. By combining AI, advanced software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing, we help aerospace and defense companies build rockets, satellites, aircraft, ships, and other mission-critical systems up to 10x faster and at significantly lower cost.
Following our $1.37B Series D at a $7.87B valuation, Hadrian is rapidly expanding our manufacturing footprint, launching new capabilities across welding, casting, forging, electronics, additive manufacturing, and more, while scaling our Factory-as-a-Service platform to transform how critical products are built.
Backed by leading investors including JPMorgan Chase, Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Lux Capital, T. Rowe Price, and Morgan Stanley, we’re building the future of American manufacturing—and looking for exceptional people to help make it happen.
If you’re ready to take on the most challenging and rewarding work of your career while helping create American manufacturing jobs for generations to come, you’re exactly who we’re looking for.
Role Summary
The Director, Forward Deployed Engineering leads the technical arm of Hadrian's Customer Programs motion. You sit inside Build Engineering and partner directly with the Customer Programs team, owning the manufacturing scoping of new customer engagements: translating what a customer wants into what Hadrian will actually commit to and build.
This role works directly with customers every day. For many of them, you and your team are the face of Hadrian engineering, so how you show up in the room matters as much as the technical answer. The work starts with discovery. Before anything is proposed, you and your team get inside the customer's operation: observing how work actually flows, mapping their processes and constraints, and interviewing the people closest to the problem until you understand what they need, which is often different from what they first ask for.
From there, you shape a solution that maximizes what the customer gets out of the engagement and builds toward where Hadrian is headed. The craft is steering to the answer where the customer's best outcome and Hadrian's direction reinforce each other: high impact, low effort, and built on what we already do well rather than new obligations we then have to invent our way out of.
The intent behind housing this role in Build Engineering is clean accountability: your team scopes what we commit to, and Build Engineering delivers it. That means the commitments you shape have to be grounded in first-principles engineering judgment and a real understanding of the factory, not optimism. You evaluate and understand before you propose or promise.