Harmattan AI
Director of Engineering - Mission Intelligence
1mo ago
EuropeDirector
Leadership role managing engineering teams focused on mission intelligence to standardize engineering excellence and improve organizational structure.
About the company
- Harmattan AI is a next-generation defense prime building autonomous and scalable defense systems. Following the close of a $200M Series B, valuing the company at $1.4 billion, we are expanding our teams and capabilities to deliver mission-critical systems to allied forces.
- Our work is guided by clear values: building technologies with real-world impact, pursuing excellence in everything we do, setting ambitious goals, and taking on the hardest technical challenges. We operate in a demanding environment where rigor, ownership, and execution are expected.
- About the Role As the Director of Engineering for Mission Intelligence at Harmattan AI, you will act as a vital management layer between R&D modules and leadership, focusing on elevating our people and standardising our engineering excellence. This is a "hands-off" people management role designed to relieve pressure on senior leadership by building high-performing teams, improving internal tooling, and standardising work processes across the company without sacrificing execution speed. You will be a visionary partner to our leadership, contributing to organisational structure and the long-term technical vision. In this role, you will lead our Mission Intelligence teams across Lausanne and Paris — covering multi-agent mission planning, semantic and geometric scene understanding, and the
Responsibilities
- People Management & Mentorship: Act as a dedicated people manager for engineers, overseeing performance reviews, career growth, and training initiatives.
- Recruitment: Own the recruitment process as the number one priority, building and maintaining an effective engineering team to meet our ambitious growth plans in a competitive AI and multi-agent talent market.
- Process Standardisation: Develop and implement standardised work processes across ML, data, and applied AI engineering teams to ensure high-quality output and consistency.
- Engineering Infrastructure: Audit and improve internal tooling—deciding between off-the-shelf and custom solutions—to ensure engineers have the best resources to succeed.
- Organisational Strategy: Contribute to the organisational structure by reorganising modules and initiating changes to optimise cross-functional (XFN) delivery.
- Vision & Execution: Collaborate with leadership to build the company vision, bringing fresh ideas to the table rather than just executing existing plans.
Requirements
- Educational Background: A strong academic record in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, or a related technical field.
- Proven Leadership: Previous experience as an Individual Contributor (IC) who has successfully transitioned into a management role, allowing you to deeply understand the technical challenges your team faces.
- Experience: Direct experience leading applied ML or autonomy engineering teams that have shipped production AI systems — not papers, not demos. Hands-on background in multi-agent systems, fleet orchestration, scene understanding, or mission planning is required; deep credibility in one or two of these is sufficient.
- Technical Engagement: While this is a management-focused role, you should still possess a desire to "keep your hands dirty" and remain engaged with the technical aspects of the work.
- Soft Skills & Communication: Exceptional soft skills and communication abilities, with a "high-bar" for excellence and a natural ability to elevate those around them.
- Commitment: 100% dedication to Harmattan AI's mission of building autonomous defence systems and a readiness to thrive in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment.
- We look forward to hearing how you can help shape the future of autonomous defense systems at Harmattan AI.