Director of Hardware

📋 Description

• Lead the hardware engineering organization — opto-mechanical, structures, thermal, avionics — across approximately three to four teams of managers and ICs
• Own design margin discipline across thermal, structural, radiation, electrical, mass, and optical budgets, and make those margins routine rather than heroic
• Drive the AIT build flow from primary mirror unit fabrication through bus-to-payload integration through environmental test, eliminating the integration-stage discoveries that should have been caught analytically
• Set and defend make-vs-buy strategy: vertical integration where the physics is the moat, aggressive outsourcing of commodity, decisions documented and revisited
• Develop hardware engineering managers who can run their domains without requiring you in every technical decision
• Engage directly in design reviews, anomaly investigations, and supplier technical assessments — operate in the system without becoming a bottleneck

🎯 Requirements

• Twelve-plus years in precision spaceflight hardware, with at least four leading hardware engineering managers
• Hands-on depth in opto-mechanical engineering, structural dynamics, or precision pointing systems — you have personally owned a precision payload or precision pointing chain end-to-end
• Track record of design margin discipline against NASA, MIL, or equivalent standards, with examples where your margin calls held up under flight conditions
• Demonstrated cross-disciplinary system reasoning: you think in budgets across optics, structures, thermal, GNC, mass, and power, and you can trace budget violations to root cause
• Experience leading hardware through environmental test campaigns and on-orbit anomaly resolution
• Real make-vs-buy decisions you have owned and can defend with cost, schedule, and capability data

🎁 Benefits

• Employee friendly equity compensation
• 4% direct matching 401k
• Health Insurance: 100% employee coverage & 75% dependent coverage
• Parental leave and childcare coverage
• Flexible vacation and sick time from day one
• Relocation package if not based in Denver