Director of Engineering, UAS Development

About Us

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.

Location: Rabat, Morocco — on site. Contract: Permanent, full time

About the Role

As the Director of Engineering for UAS Development at Harmattan AI, you will build and lead a new engineering organisation from the ground up in Rabat, Morocco.

This is a founding role, not a succession: the site opens this year, the leadership layer does not exist yet, and you will help to hire it. You will lead six engineering modules to around 50 collaborators. This is a sovereign capability, engineered locally from first principles with no design package transferred in from another site.

You will own the full technical chain, take the system through qualification and into series production against a fixed contractual calendar, and build the local supplier base and engineering ecosystem that sustains it. You will report directly to the VP Engineering with regular exposure to our CTOs, our General Manager Morocco, and the customer.

Responsibilities

• Organisation Building: Stand up the engineering group from an office that is still opening - reach full staffing at pace without lowering the bar.

• Programme Delivery: Hold a fixed milestone calendar where dates are contractual, and set an operating cadence built around the programme rather than a generic quarterly rhythm.

• Technical Ownership: Own the full technical chain across airframe, propulsion, avionics, launcher and ground segment, through to flight test and trials on local soil.

• People Management & Mentorship: Manage managers while staying close to the engineering — run design and programme reviews across five disciplines in the same week, and calibrate a leadership layer you built yourself.

• Local Ecosystem: Develop the local supplier base and entity operations, which in the first year sit with this role rather than with a support function.

• Stakeholder & Customer Interface: Work directly with the General Manager, Chief Engineer, programme management, group CTOs and the customer, owning the evidence and milestone relationship end to end.

Candidate Requirements

• Educational Background: An MSc in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical or a strongly related engineering field. A track record of building organisations will outweigh the degree.

• Proven Leadership: An engineer who moved into management and then into managing managers, with at least four direct reports who were themselves leads.

• Experience: 10+ years, with at least 4 in engineering management. You have stood up or materially scaled an engineering site — including hiring it locally, at pace.

• Programme Track Record: You have taken a hardware system through qualification and into series production against fixed contractual milestones, ideally under a defence customer. Background in UAV, autonomous systems or advanced robotics.

• Technical Engagement: While this is a leadership role, you remain credible across every discipline in the group without claiming depth in any, and you take written positions on the cross-module questions no one else will close.

• Commitment: 100% dedication to Harmattan AI's mission of building autonomous defence systems, on site in Rabat with regular travel to Paris and Lausanne.

We look forward to hearing how you can help shape the future of autonomous defense systems at Harmattan AI.