Manager - Software Engineering - Factory Platform

About the Team: 

The Terrestrial Software team is building the foundation for an automated rocket factory and integrated launch platform. Their mission is to automate and streamline workflows across the entire lifecycle of Terran R, from raw material intake to launch operations and eventually manufacturing on Mars. Today, that means partnering directly with teams across design, materials, manufacturing, and test and launch to design, implement, and deploy end user enterprise-wide applications, industrial automation, data analytics infrastructure, and next-generation AI to solve real problems and accelerate progress. Long term, the team is laying the groundwork for a modular, scalable software platform that can power highly autonomous operations on Earth and beyond. This is a team for builders and thinkers who thrive on cross-functional impact and want to shape the digital backbone of our future in space.

About the Role:

As an Engineering Manager on the Factory Platform team, you'll lead a squad building mission-critical tooling for design and simulation engineers who are optimizing the performance of Terran R. Your team will deliver the engineering analysis platform, design tools, and data pipelines that transform test stand telemetry and simulation results into actionable insights. You'll work directly with propulsion, structures, avionics, and test engineers to understand their workflows, remove bottlenecks, and build software that accelerates their ability to iterate, validate, and improve the vehicle with rigor and speed.

• Hire, grow, and manage a team of 5-10 engineers (1:1s, performance reviews, career development)
• Set team roadmap and priorities in partnership with design and test engineering stakeholders
• Establish engineering standards: code quality, testing, deployment, incident response
• Guide architectural decisions and keep your team unblocked
• Build a high-performing culture of ownership and continuous improvement
• Ship code as much as possible, time permitting

Technologies we use: 

• Python, React, Typescript, Go
• Iceberg, BigQuery, Duckdb, DBT, Postgres
• AWS, GCP, Kubernetes (both cloud and on-prem), Terraform, Helm

About You:

• Bachelor's or higher in CS or a related engineering field
• 5+ years of software engineering experience across multiple production systems
• Proven track record hiring, retaining, and developing engineers
• Expert in React and modern frontend tooling
• Fluent in at least one backend language (Go, Python) and willing to range across the stack
• Comfortable driving architectural decisions and building buy-in across engineering and non-engineering stakeholders
• Strong written and verbal communication - you can write a crisp design doc and also give useful, timely feedback to a struggling engineer

Nice to haves but not required:  

• Bachelor's or higher in CS or related engineering field
• 3+ years engineering management experience with direct reports (5-10+ team size)
• 7+ years prior software engineering experience
• Strong hiring, retention, and talent development track record
• Full-stack technical foundation (frontend and backend)
• Excellent communication: technical tradeoffs, strategy docs, feedback, influence

Nice to haves:  

• Experience managing managers or multiple teams
• Background in engineering analysis tools, scientific computing, or data-intensive applications
• Familiarity with simulation, CAD/CAE, or test data systems
• Aerospace, automotive, or hardware-driven industry experience
• DevOps, MLOps, or data platform engineering background