Director Robotics Jobs in Santa Rosa, CA (NOW HIRING)

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.

The Role

What You’ll Do

• Own the reliability of our robotics systems, from PLCs through ROS2/middleware to Kubernetes.

• Build interfaces to our observability system to ingest telemetry from our controls and robotics systems. Leverage solutions such as Prometheus, Telegraf, OpenTelemetry, and Datadog.

• Write code frameworks and tools to support our controls and robotics systems, including diagnostic tools, shared libraries for telemetry data, and automated remediation.

• Partner with controls, robotics, and platform engineering teams to bake reliability in early. Review designs, develop SLOs and SLIs, introduce reliability release gates, and push for telemetry contracts to develop production-grade services.

What We’re Looking For

• Ownership. Someone who has owned the reliability of a production system where downtime had physical or operational consequences (manufacturing line, autonomous vehicle, lab automation, network operations)

• Systems Thinker. Focused on understanding the relationship among various systems to design sustainable solutions, not one-time fixes.

• Problem Solver. Solving complex puzzles excites and motivates you to find an efficient solution.

• T-Shaped Skill Set. Comfortable with bare metal Kubernetes, networking, GitOps workflows, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Also skilled in programming in TypeScript, Python, Golang, or C++.

• Strong Communication. You can run a war room, write a post-mortem, and explain a reliability tradeoff to a stakeholder.

What Will Set You Apart

• You've built automated or self-healing remediation at scale. We want systems that remove humans from the loop.

• Background in edge/on-prem infrastructure. You’ve run Kubernetes at the edge (k3s, k0s, k0smotron), managing on-prem clusters, time-series at the edge, or air-gapped deployments. A deep understanding of Linux operating system fundamentals such as cgroups, sockets, and system tuning, is a big plus.

• Deep understanding of shipping and storing telemetry data at scale. Experience with Kafka/MQTT/RabbitMQ is a plus.

• Direct robotics experience. ROS/ROS2, OPC UA, EtherCAT, motion controllers, or fleet management for autonomous systems

• An individual who is self-directed and can deliver with high velocity.

Compensation

For this role, the target salary range is $164,000 - $270,000 (actual range may vary based on experience).

This is the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the range may be modified in the future. An employee's pay position within the salary range will be based on several factors, including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans for employees

• 401k

• Relocation support may be provided for certain situations, based on business need.

• Flexible vacation policy

• Equity

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

Hadrian uses AI-assisted tools in our recruiting and hiring processes to help our team work more efficiently. This may include tools that help organize and analyze recruiting data, as well as an AI-powered notetaker that can record and transcribe interviews and help coordinate feedback. These tools support our team and are not used to make hiring decisions. All candidate evaluations and hiring decisions are performed by humans. If an interview will be recorded, you will be notified in advance and may opt out at any time with no impact on your candidacy. Candidate data processed through these tools is subject to the same protections described in our Privacy Policy.

It is the Company’s policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. The Company does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race inclusive of traits historically associated with race (including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles, such as braids, locks and twists), color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, national origin (including, in California, possession of a drivers license), ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, height or weight, medical condition, family care status, military or veteran status, marital status, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, exercise of reproductive rights, any other basis protected by local, state, or federal laws, or any combination of the above characteristics. When necessary, the Company also makes reasonable accommodations for disabled candidates and employees, including for candidates or employees who are disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.