Director, Real Estate & Facilities

About the role

Muon seeks a Director of Facilities to lead the team responsible for the infrastructure that our spacecraft are designed, built, and tested on. You will own the strategy, capital plan, and day-to-day performance of every facility Muon operates — from cleanroom and AIT space to environmental test infrastructure, critical power and process utilities. This is a hands-on executive role: you will set multi-year site and capacity strategy with the leadership team, defend and manage a capital and operating budget, and then personally drive the projects and vendor relationships that deliver it. You will build and develop the facilities engineering and maintenance organization and act as the single accountable owner for facility uptime against an aggressive spacecraft production ramp. Success in this role looks like spacecraft production never waiting on the building.

This position is fully onsite and requires working in our San Jose, CA office five days a week.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the multi-year facilities and site strategy for Muon, translating spacecraft production rate targets and program roadmaps into infrastructure and real estate requirements, and presenting those plans and their tradeoffs to the executive team.
• Build, lead, and develop the facilities organization, including facilities engineers, maintenance technicians, and contract staff. Set performance expectations, grow technical depth on the team, and establish on-call and escalation structures.
• Partner with Manufacturing, AIT, Test, Quality, Growth, IT/Security, and People Operations to ensure facility design and operations support production flow, cleanliness requirements, and a safe, high-quality work environment.
• Own the facilities capital and operating budget end-to-end, including forecasting, business case and ROI development for proposed projects, prioritization across competing program needs, and accountability for spend against plan.
• Serve as executive sponsor for major capital projects — cleanroom build-outs, environmental test installations, utility expansions, and site activations — making scope, schedule, cost, and risk tradeoff decisions.
• Define and own the reliability strategy for all facility infrastructure, including preventive and predictive maintenance programs, criticality ranking of assets, spares strategy, and redundancy decisions.
• Establish and report facilities KPIs — uptime, deferred maintenance, project delivery against baseline, and operating cost per square foot — to the team and to executive leadership on a regular basis.
• Lead the process to source, negotiate and manage contracts and performance for architects, general contractors, MEP design firms, commissioning agents, and service vendors; hold vendors to Muon's technical standards and commercial terms.
• Develop the code compliance posture of Muon's sites, including permitting strategy with local authorities, occupancy and inspection close-out, hazardous materials management, and environmental compliance.
• Develop the business continuity and emergency response plans for Muon's facilities, including readiness procedures for seismic events, power loss, and other environmental threats.

Qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, other technical discipline or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of professional experience in facilities engineering, infrastructure, or plant operations, including 5+ years leading and developing teams.
• Demonstrated ownership of large capital expansion projects from business case through commissioning and close-out, with accountability for multi-million dollar budgets and schedule commitments.
• Experience setting infrastructure strategy for a manufacturing organization scaling production rate, and communicating that strategy and its tradeoffs to an executive audience.
• Strong familiarity with MEP and HVAC building systems, including electrical and power distribution, critical power infrastructure, chillers, plumbing and process water systems with the ability to evaluate contractor and consulting engineer designs critically rather than accepting them at face value.
• Proven vendor and contract management capability, including competitive bid processes, scope negotiation, and holding contractors accountable to technical and commercial terms.
• Experience with heightened physical security requirements for critical industries
• Familiarity with Federal and State Environmental Health and Safety requirements
• Ability to quickly assess an issue, engage directly with technicians on troubleshooting and repair, and make a decisive call under time pressure.
• Acute attention to detail and the ability to see interactions across systems to avoid problems before they reach production.

Nice-to-have Skills

• Direct experience with aerospace manufacturing and environmental test equipment (clean rooms, vibration tables, thermal vacuum chambers, in-air thermal chambers) and the facility loads and interfaces they require.
• Experience with specialty gas and cryogenic systems, including CDA and LN2 generation, storage, and distribution.
• Experience activating a new site or standing up a greenfield manufacturing facility.
• Experience developing and managing facilities across multiple geographically distributed sites.
• Familiarity with CMMS platforms and building management systems, and using asset data to drive maintenance and capital decisions.
• Experience with AutoCAD, Revit, or engineering design software.
• Familiarity with AS9100 or similar quality systems as they apply to facility and infrastructure controls.

Salary

The salary range for this role is $216,000 - $231,000, plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process.