Head of Operations

What you’ll do

• Own company operations across facilities, people operations, recruiting operations, vendor management, procurement, finance/admin workflows, legal coordination, and internal systems.
• Build the operating cadence of the company: weekly leadership meetings, department rhythms, KPI tracking, company goals, hiring plans, project follow-through, and accountability loops.
• Help scale our El Segundo factory into a high-output aerospace manufacturing and flight-test operation.
• Partner with engineering and manufacturing leads to remove blockers, improve throughput, tighten execution, and keep the team focused on the highest-priority work.
• Build lightweight systems for onboarding, purchasing, inventory, facilities, documentation, compliance, security, IT, and internal communication.
• Drive special projects for the CEO, especially cross-functional projects that do not fit neatly into one department but are critical to the company.
• Help prepare the company for the next stage of growth, including larger facilities, more complex programs, more hires, more customers, and higher operational intensity.

What we’re looking for

• Elite operator who gets things done; organized, intense, low-ego, and allergic to bureaucracy.
• Comfortable operating at 60,000 feet and on the factory floor in the same day.
• Can build systems without slowing the company down.
• Comfortable working directly with the CEO and senior technical leaders.
• Can manage chaos, make decisions with incomplete information, and create clarity for the team.
• Extremely high ownership: fix what’s broken, clarify what’s unclear, accelerate what’s moving too slowly.
• Does not need hand-holding; finds the problem, creates the plan, and drives it to completion.
• Prior experience in startups, aerospace, defense, manufacturing, hardware, operations, consulting, finance, or military leadership is helpful but not required; raw horsepower, judgment, ownership, and execution matter most.

Why Icarus

• A lot of equity
• Top market salary and bonuses
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Factory in El Segundo
• Real ownership, real hardware, real flight
• Small team, massive responsibility (but growing very fast)
• High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture
• Dream desk setup
• Daily lunch
• Unlimited Celsius
• We are pioneers, not corporate managers.
• High-trust, no-BS team; everyone pulls their weight.
• Builders wanted: no hand-holding, no fluff, no fake projects, no sitting in meetings all day. Real execution, real hardware, real flight, and real company-building.