Vice President of Engineering

About Castelion

Castelion is bringing a new approach to defense development and production: one that focuses on short, iterative design cycles, rapid testing in development, and modern commercial manufacturing strategies for production at scale. We’re designing, building, and testing next generation long range strike weapons systems to give America and its Allies a definitive edge and deter future conflicts.

Vice President of Engineering

As VP of Engineering, you will be responsible for the end-to-end design, development, and execution of Castelion’s cutting-edge missile systems. You will drive technical excellence, lead multidisciplinary teams, and ensure our systems are highly manufacturable, cost-effective, and mission-ready. This is a unique opportunity to shape a rapidly growing company’s technical direction, balancing speed, innovation, and reliability in an environment where every decision has a direct impact on national security.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership: Own the engineering strategy, ensuring technical decisions align with company objectives, manufacturability, and rapid hardware iteration.
• Team Growth & Development: Build, mentor, and scale a high-performing team of engineers across mechanical, electrical, software, propulsion, and GNC disciplines.
• Program Execution: Oversee the full product lifecycle—from concept to production—driving aggressive development timelines while maintaining quality and mission success.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Manufacturing, Business Development, and Operations teams to ensure engineering efforts align with customer needs, production capabilities, and company goals.
• Risk & Trade Studies: Identify key technical risks and drive rigorous trade studies to ensure the best possible system architecture, balancing cost, performance, and schedule.
• Customer & Stakeholder Engagement: Represent Castelion’s engineering capabilities to DoD customers, partners, and investors, ensuring alignment between technical development and program needs.

Qualifications

• 15 years of experience in aerospace, defense, or high-performance engineering environments, with at least 5 years in leadership roles.
• Deep expertise in one or more relevant areas: hypersonics, propulsion, avionics, guidance/navigation/control (GNC), or high-reliability aerospace systems.
• Proven ability to lead engineering teams through complex system development, from concept to production.
• Experience balancing speed, cost, and manufacturability in a hardware-driven environment.
• Strong understanding of DoD requirements, system engineering processes, and mission assurance.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, resource-constrained startup environment.
• U.S. citizenship required; ability to obtain a security clearance preferred.

Why Castelion?

• High Impact: Play a pivotal role in shaping the future of hypersonic deterrence.
• Rapid Growth: Join a company scaling aggressively with a strong engineering-driven culture.
• Hands-On Development: Work in a hardware-rich environment where designs quickly transition from concept to real-world testing.
• Elite Team: Collaborate with some of the best minds in aerospace, pushing the boundaries of speed, precision, and reliability.

If you’re a mission-driven leader looking to build and scale world-class engineering teams while driving the future of hypersonic systems, we’d love to talk.

All employees are granted long-term stock incentives as part of their employment as Castelion. All employees receive access to comprehensive medial, vision, and dental insurance, and the company offers three weeks of paid time off per year.

Leadership Qualities

Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving. Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented. Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains. Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support.

High Commitment, High Initiative. A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion’s mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company’s technical goals and prevent hardware blockers. Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere. Strong sense of accountability and integrity.

Clear Communicator. Proactively communicates blockers. Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers. Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships. Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.

ITAR Requirements:

• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Employment with Castelion is governed on the basis of competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.