Head of Software Tools

Turion is developing the critical infrastructure of the space economy. We're doing this by building vertically integrated hardware and software: DROID, our line of space vehicles, and Starfire, our software suite covering simulation, modeling, planning, and operations. We're a group of people who fell in love with the future sci-fi promised us, and we're building it into reality. We build hard things. We build them well. And we're just getting started. Turion is scaling toward production of tens of vehicles per month while running several vehicle development efforts in parallel, and the engineering practices that got us here will not get us there on manual effort alone. The Head of Vehicle Development, Software owns the software layer of how we develop vehicles: the tools, automation, AI, and data infrastructure that let a lean team design, analyze, build, and verify spacecraft at production rate. You will turn one-off engineering analyses into push-button pipelines, wire our design and systems processes into a connected digital thread, and give every responsible engineer an unfair advantage. This is a player-coach role. You will set the vision and recruit a small, elite team, and you will ship code yourself from day one. This is a full-time, exempt position based on-site at our Irvine, California headquarters. RESPONSIBILITIES - Own the roadmap. Define and drive the strategy for vehicle development software across analysis automation, design automation, systems and requirements tooling, applied AI, engineering data infrastructure, and compute. - Build the team. Recruit, lead, and grow the software engineers on this team, set the technical bar, and stay hands-on in architecture and code. - Automate analysis. Drive the conversion of manual thermal, structural, vibration, shock, and environments analyses into parameterized, repeatable pipelines with automated model generation, batch solves, margin tracking, and generated reports. - Automate design and release. Own CAD, ECAD, PDM/PLM, BOM, and engineering release automation, plus clean hand-offs to manufacturing and supply chain. - Systemize systems engineering. Stand up requirements, verification, budget, and trade study tooling so systems engineering runs on live data rather than static documents. - Connect the digital thread. Create a common data layer linking requirements, CAD and ECAD, analysis models, test results, and as-built vehicle configurations, giving one source of truth from concept through on-orbit operations. - Build the compute layer. Stand up the cloud and HPC infrastructure that simulation, data, and AI workloads run on, and keep cost per solve falling. - Prove the leverage. Partner with responsible engineers in every discipline to find the highest value automation targets, drive adoption, and measure and publish cycle time and quality wins. Minimum Qualifications - Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field. - 8+ years of software engineering experience, including building internal tools, automation, or infrastructure for hardware engineering organizations such as aerospace, defense, or automotive. - Expert-level Python, working fluency in at least one systems language such as C++, and strong software architecture fundamentals. - Hands-on experience automating commercial CAD, CAE, or ECAD tools through their APIs and scripting interfaces. - Enough depth in at least one engineering domain, such as thermal, structures and dynamics, orbital mechanics, or electronics design, to partner credibly with analysts and design engineers. You understand what the tools are computing, not just how to script them. - Experience with modern data and cloud infrastructure including databases and data modeling, services and APIs, CI/CD, and compute heavy workloads. - Demonstrated technical leadership through architecture ownership, mentoring, or direct management, and the ability to recruit strong engineers. Preferred Qualifications - Experie…