Growth Finance Associate

About this role

HADRIAN - MANUFACTURING THE FUTURE

Hadrian is building autonomous factories to reindustrialize America. By combining AI, advanced software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing, we help aerospace and defense companies build rockets, satellites, aircraft, ships, and other mission-critical systems up to 10x faster and at significantly lower cost.

Following our $1.37B Series D at a $7.87B valuation, Hadrian is rapidly expanding our manufacturing footprint, launching new capabilities across welding, casting, forging, electronics, additive manufacturing, and more, while scaling our Factory-as-a-Service platform to transform how critical products are built.

Backed by leading investors including JPMorgan Chase, Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Lux Capital, T. Rowe Price, and Morgan Stanley, we’re building the future of American manufacturing—and looking for exceptional people to help make it happen.

If you’re ready to take on the most challenging and rewarding work of your career while helping create American manufacturing jobs for generations to come, you’re exactly who we’re looking for.

THE ROLE

Growth Finance owns the economics of how Hadrian wins work. We sit at the front end of every program, pricing the pursuit, shaping the deal, and structuring the partnerships and joint ventures that get new capacity off the ground with our commercial and government customers.

The Associate is the analytical center of that work. You'll build the model behind a pursuit from a blank sheet: unit economics, capacity and capex requirements, rate and margin structure, and the returns case that determines whether we bid, at what price, and on what terms. You'll pressure-test your own assumptions before anyone else gets the chance, and you'll be expected to have a view, not just a spreadsheet, on whether a program is worth pursuing.

Beyond the model, you'll help structure the vehicles. That means partnership and JV economics, term sheets, waterfall and downside mechanics, and the diligence behind counterparties we're considering taking risk with. You'll write the memo that goes to leadership, and you'll defend it in the room.

This is a small team with a short path to owning deals outright. The work available to you scales with what you demonstrate rather than with tenure.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Build and own financial models for Hadrian's largest capital decisions, factory builds, new capability investments across welding, casting, forging, and additive, and program-level spend. This includes scenario modeling, cash flow forecasting, and spend projections.

- Own the financial evaluation of individual investments end to end, applying transaction-level rigor: ROI, payback period, cash impact, and the explicit trade-offs across cost, schedule, and scope.

- Support corporate development and capital markets work spanning M&A, carve-outs, equity investments, and joint ventures, from market research and target screening through diligence, structuring, and modeling.

- Act as the financial counterpart to engineering, manufacturing, and program leadership. Many initiatives reach you as an engineering idea and a number on a whiteboard; you bring visibility, structure, and accountability.

- Maintain forecasts and consolidated budgets that tie to our accounting frameworks, and keep financial plans aligned to operational milestones and program timelines.

- Provide real-time insight into program performance, surfacing risks, opportunities, and trade-offs early enough for someone to act on them.

- Analyze the operational drivers that determine whether a factory is economic: labor productivity, machine utilization, throughput, and unit cost performance.

- Translate analysis into executive- and board-facing materials. Your work will be read by people who decide in minutes, so the "so what" has to survive compression.

- Improve the plumbing. Find and fix gaps in reporting, forecasting process, automation, and data infrastructure rather than building workarounds.

- Work across functions constantly, Production Operations, Engineering, Program Management, Special Projects, Automation, Accounting, Legal, and Investor Relations.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

- 2-5 years experience across strategic finance, FP&A, investment banking, private equity or growth equity, private credit, management consulting, corporate development, and/or strategy & operations.

- Ability to build a complex financial model from a blank page — not only to maintain one you inherited. Cash flow forecasting and scenario analysis are core, not adjacent.

- Demonstrated ability to carry ambiguous, cross-functional work all the way to a decision without being managed to it. We would rather tell you to slow down than to speed up.

- Strong written and verbal communication, specifically the ability to compress a complex analysis into something a senior leader can act on immediately.

- High ownership and genuine curiosity about how physical things get made. Comfort being wrong in public, and iterating quickly when you are.

- Ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams without dropping any of them.

- U.S. Person status is required, as this position needs access to export-controlled data.

WHAT WILL SET YOU APART

- Experience in capital-intensive industries, aerospace and defense, advanced manufacturing, automotive, semiconductors, energy, or data centers.

- Project finance, capital project analysis, or large-scale infrastructure and high-dollar investment work.

- M&A due diligence, transaction structuring, carve-outs, transaction advisory, or restructuring.

- Exposure to program management or large-scale project delivery.

- Experience in a high-growth or PE/VC-backed environment.

- Working knowledge of government contracting processes and procedures.

- NetSuite or comparable ERP experience.

BENEFITS FOR FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES

- Medical, dental, vision, an

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