Harmattan AI

Director of Engineering, UAS Development at Harmattan AI (Rabat, Morocco)

Harmattan AI· Rabat, Morocco·

Role details

Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time

Harmattan AI at a glance

France's first defense-tech unicorn, building attritable AI-piloted strike, interception, and ISR drones for allied militaries.

Harmattan AI is a vertically integrated defense prime building autonomous drone systems for allied militaries. It designs the full stack, from airframes and payloads to embedded compute and the autonomy algorithms that let drones sense, decide, and act at the edge without GPS or a network link, coordinated across a swarm by its mission-orchestration layer.

$242M raised · latest: Series B · $200M · January 2026 · backed by Dassault Aviation, FirstMark Capital, Atlantic, Motier Ventures

Job description

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.

About the Role

As the Director of Engineering for UAS Development at Harmattan AI, you will build and lead an engineering organisation with various engineering modules from the ground up. You will own the full technical chain, take the system through qualification and into series production, and build a supplier base and engineering ecosystem that sustains it.

Responsibilities

  • Organisation Building: Stand up the engineering group including hiring key engineering roles.
  • Project Management: Act as a project manager handling the delivery of key milestones.
  • Technical Ownership: Own the full technical chain across airframe, propulsion, avionics, launcher and ground segment, through to flight test and trials.
  • People Management & Mentorship: Manage managers while staying close to the engineering — run regular design reviews across multiple disciplines.
  • Supplier Ecosystem: Develop a supplier base.

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.
  • Experience: 10+ years, with at least 4 in engineering management. You have stood up or materially scaled an engineering site — including hiring at pace.
  • Track Record: You have taken a hardware system through qualification and into series production. 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

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

Why work at Harmattan AI

  • Culture: “Elite builders” who “thrive on complexity, move with urgency, and own their work end to end.” Emphasis on purpose, technical excellence, and real‑world impact. harmattan.ai
  • Values: Tackle the hardest problems, build what matters, move at the speed of relevance, and aim to redefine frontiers. harmattan.ai
  • Work policy: Hybrid model with a mix of remote and on‑site; many roles are in‑office at locations in Paris, Lausanne, London, Arlington (TX), Wissous, Poland, UAE, and Morocco. builtin.com
  • Engineering culture: Hands‑on development of mission‑critical autonomous systems; strong R&D focus across AI, computer vision, RF hardware, propulsion, and mission planning.
  • Perks: Not explicitly listed, but the company highlights the opportunity to protect front‑line personnel and shape the future of autonomous defence.

Application questions