Director of Software Engineering
Role summary by JobGrid
Director of Software Engineering at nox-metals: Detroit, United States; On-site; Executive; IT; Engineering Manager. JobGrid adds normalized role facts, source context, and a path to the employer application page so candidates can compare the listing before applying.
- Location and workplace: Detroit, United States, On-site
- Role classification: IT, Engineering Manager, Executive
- Source freshness: checked by JobGrid on 2026-05-29.
- Application path: candidates continue to the employer application page with non-personal referral tags.
Director of Software Engineering | Nox Metals | Detroit, MI
American 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 MORIA
Own the engineering roadmap end to end, set priorities, ship on time
Stay hands on, write code, review PRs, pair with engineers on the hardest problems
Work directly with the founder to translate company strategy into engineering execution
Walk the floor every week and make sure the team is building what the business actually needs
Set the bar for code quality, system design, deploy hygiene, on call, and production reliability
Run the hiring loop, close candidates, and onboard new engineers fast
Drive real ML and AI features into production, cut time models, demand intelligence, AI parsing of sales orders, agentic workflows across the company
Own production systems, incident response, postmortems, and the culture of fix forward
Make the team faster every quarter, better tools, better workflows, better leverage on AI
Look at every system and figure out how to make it better
Work safely every shift and hold the team to the same standard
You should be:
7+ years of engineering experience with 2+ years leading and managing a team
Track record of shipping production software at a startup, ideally scaled a team from a handful to 10+ engineers
Strong in TypeScript, Node, and modern web frameworks (NestJS, Next.js, React, or comparable)
Deep experience with Postgres, Supabase, or comparable database and backend platforms
Still writes production code and wants to
Cracked with AI tools, you use them every day and you have figured out how to make a whole team 10x more efficient with them
A builder at heart, you would rather ship a working v1 today than ship a perfect v3 next month, and you instill that in the team
Strong product instincts, you sit with a customer or an operator and turn what you see into a roadmap
A great manager of engineers, you grow people, you give hard feedback, you set a high bar, and people want to work for you
Comfortable 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 front
Relentless on quality, every PR, every deploy, every customer-facing experience
Always 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 dock
User obsessed, you sit with the operator, the scheduler, the buyer, you watch them work, and you build software they actually want to use
A team player with a good attitude, you make the team better for everyone around you
Someone who takes ownership of the whole engineering org, if it is in production, it is your responsibility
Precise under pressure and reliable
Organized and detail oriented
Committed to safety, you follow every protocol, wear your PPE, and never cut corners that put people at risk
High agency, you handle big items alone and ask for help when needed
Low ego, you walk the floor, you talk to operators, you do the unglamorous work because it needs to get done
Not afraid to work outside normal hours when America demands it
Never says "that's not my job"
Nice to have:
Experience leading software teams in manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, or industrial environments
Background with 2D bin packing, optimization, scheduling algorithms, or operations research
Background with ML, applied AI, or data-heavy product work
Experience integrating with hardware, PLCs, CNC controllers, or shop floor systems
Experience standing up engineering practices from scratch, on call, code review, deploy, observability, security
Strong design sensibility, you can ship a UI that looks as good as it works
Open source work or a portfolio of things you and your teams have built
This role is full time, in person in Detroit.