Head of Qualification

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. THE ROLE: Hadrian is seeking a Head of Qualification to own and scale how parts get qualified for production across our defense programs. This is the leader who turns incomplete, legacy technical data into production-ready manufacturing data and source-approved parts, at speed and at scale. Qualification is its own discipline at Hadrian: the end-to-end pipeline that takes a part from intake through technical data evaluation, gap resolution, qualification data package assembly, first article verification, and part qualification to source approval. The Director of Qualification owns that pipeline — the process, the tooling that runs it, the team of Product Qualification Managers (PQMs) and engineers who do the substantive technical work, and the customer-facing relationships that move parts through approval. This person will define what qualification means at Hadrian, hold a clear line on what is and isn't in scope, and build a function that gives our customers full visibility into where every part is and what's blocking it, while keeping qualification throughput and confidence in the data extremely high. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own Hadrian's end-to-end qualification function — from part intake through technical data evaluation, gap resolution, qualification data package assembly, first article verification, and source approval — in alignment with customer requirements - Define and maintain qualification scope, and own the qualification pipeline and its workflow automation - Lead the technical core: direct Product Qualification Managers (PQMs) and Manufacturing/Quality Engineers performing technical data evaluation and qualification data package generation, producing production-ready design data sets and TDPs - Own qualification performance and reporting — tracking metrics such as time-to-qualification, parts in pipeline, parts qualified, and parts overseen per PQM — and serve as Hadrian's qualification interface to the customer, running part prioritization jointly - Partner closely with reverse engineering, manufacturing engineering, and quality to ensure qualification outputs translate into producible, source-approved parts, while hiring, developing, and scaling a high-performing qualification organization WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - Bachelor's degree in Mechanical or Manufacturing Engineering or a related technical field, and 8+ years of experience in qualification, quality, manufacturing engineering, or related leadership roles - Detailed knowledge of part/product qualification, first article verification, technical data packages (TDPs), and source approval; aviation component qualification is a plus - Demonstrated ability to interpret and apply complex regulatory and customer requirements based on intent and risk, and to translate them into clear, practical workflows - Demonstrated ability to build, scale, or sig…