Infrastructure Engineer, Principal

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, we’re rapidly expanding our manufacturing footprint and scaling our Factory-as-a-Service platform to transform how critical products are built.

About the role

In this role you'll define the technical direction for the infrastructure platform powering automated manufacturing across multiple factory sites. You'll shape the architecture spanning cloud, edge, and factory-floor systems, setting the standards, patterns, and engineering culture that the entire organization builds on. You'll move fluidly between strategy and implementation: one day driving a multi-cluster Kubernetes architecture decision, the next pairing on a Terraform module that makes it real. This role demands someone who has simplified complex systems at org scale, built platforms that engineers love to use, and grown the people around them.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement cloud infrastructure on AWS using Terraform/OpenTofu
• Build and manage Kubernetes clusters (EKS in cloud, K0s/K3s at the edge)
• Build CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows with GitHub Actions and ArgoCD
• Develop reusable infrastructure patterns: Terraform modules, Helm charts, CUE schemas
• Architect networking between sites, edge devices, and cloud
• Implement monitoring and observability with Prometheus/Grafana and Datadog
• Support edge computing and IoT device deployments on factory floors
• Drive build-vs-buy decisions and technology evaluations
• Establish engineering standards and best practices
• Represent infrastructure in cross-functional architecture reviews
• Make architecture decisions under ambiguity and document them as ADRs
• Identify systemic operational gaps and drive automation that eliminates recurring toil
• Participate in on-call rotation and incident response
• Write clear documentation and runbooks

Requirements

• 10-15+ years in infrastructure or platform engineering
• Expert-level infrastructure design across cloud, containers, and networking
• Can go from architecture whiteboard to production implementation, and has done it repeatedly
• Deep Terraform/IaC skills with module development and testing experience
• Production Kubernetes experience including troubleshooting, scaling, and multi-cluster patterns
• Strong security instincts: threat modeling, least privilege, compliance fundamentals
• Track record of building reusable patterns that other engineers adopt
• History of reducing complexity, not just adding capability
• Strong documentation and communication skills
• Comfortable mentoring teammates and sharing knowledge

Qualifications

• Experience defining infrastructure strategy and technical direction for an engineering org
• Track record of driving platform adoption across multiple teams without direct authority
• Background operating at scale: multi-site deployments, 20+ consuming teams, or similarly demanding environments
• History of mentoring senior engineers into technical leaders
• Deep experience with architecture trade-offs in hybrid cloud/edge environments
• Demonstrated ability to simplify systems and retire tools that no longer serve the org

Pay

For this role, the target salary range is $250,000 - $320,000 (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.

Benefits

• 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.