Director of Software Engineering

Director of Software Engineering | Nox Metals | Detroit, MIAmerican factories deserve a supply chain that moves as fast as they do. The next generation of American manufacturing is being built right now. Nox Metals is the supply chain behind it.Nox Metals is a technology company in Detroit supplying aluminum plate, bar, and rounds to aerospace and defense manufacturers. We use software and automation to supply metal to American factories faster than the industry thought possible.We need a Director of Software Engineering to lead the team building the systems that run the company. Our software is not a side project, it is the product. NOX NEST runs the factory floor, WAYNE runs nesting and quoting, Gondor runs the customer experience, MORIA runs inventory and demand intelligence. Every shipment we send goes out because of code we wrote. This role owns the engineering org, the roadmap, and the team that builds it. Nox Metals is an employer with real opportunity for long term career growth, this is a place to build a career, not just hold a job.You will:Lead, hire, and grow the engineering team across NOX NEST, WAYNE, Gondor, and MORIAOwn the engineering roadmap end to end, set priorities, ship on timeStay hands on, write code, review PRs, pair with engineers on the hardest problemsWork directly with the founder to translate company strategy into engineering executionWalk the floor every week and make sure the team is building what the business actually needsSet the bar for code quality, system design, deploy hygiene, on call, and production reliabilityRun the hiring loop, close candidates, and onboard new engineers fastDrive real ML and AI features into production, cut time models, demand intelligence, AI parsing of sales orders, agentic workflows across the companyOwn production systems, incident response, postmortems, and the culture of fix forwardMake the team faster every quarter, better tools, better workflows, better leverage on AILook at every system and figure out how to make it betterWork safely every shift and hold the team to the same standardYou should be:7+ years of engineering experience with 2+ years leading and managing a teamTrack record of shipping production software at a startup, ideally scaled a team from a handful to 10+ engineersStrong in TypeScript, Node, and modern web frameworks (NestJS, Next.js, React, or comparable)Deep experience with Postgres, Supabase, or comparable database and backend platformsStill writes production code and wants toCracked with AI tools, you use them every day and you have figured out how to make a whole team 10x more efficient with themA builder at heart, you would rather ship a working v1 today than ship a perfect v3 next month, and you instill that in the teamStrong product instincts, you sit with a customer or an operator and turn what you see into a roadmapA great manager of engineers, you grow people, you give hard feedback, you set a high bar, and people want to work for youComfortable working close to the metal, the floor, the customer, the operator, your team writes software that lives in the real world and you lead from the frontRelentless on quality, every PR, every deploy, every customer-facing experienceAlways thinking about how to make systems better, you do not accept "this is how we have always done it"Absolutely customer obsessed, every line of code your team ships eventually shows up as a part on a customer's dockUser obsessed, you sit with the operator, the scheduler, the buyer, you watch them work, and you build software they actually want to useA team player with a good attitude, you make the team better for everyone around youSomeone who takes ownership of the whole engineering org, if it is in production, it is your responsibilityPrecise under pressure and reliableOrganized and detail orientedCommitted to safety, you follow every protocol, wear your PPE, and never cut corners that put people at riskHigh agency, you handle big items alone and ask for help when neededLow ego, you walk the floor, you talk to operators, you do the unglamorous work because it needs to get doneNot afraid to work outside normal hours when America demands itNever says "that's not my job"Nice to have:Experience leading software teams in manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, or industrial environmentsBackground with 2D bin packing, optimization, scheduling algorithms, or operations researchBackground with ML, applied AI, or data-heavy product workExperience integrating with hardware, PLCs, CNC controllers, or shop floor systemsExperience standing up engineering practices from scratch, on call, code review, deploy, observability, securityStrong design sensibility, you can ship a UI that looks as good as it worksOpen source work or a portfolio of things you and your teams have builtThis role is full time, in person in Detroit.