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Icarus

Solar-powered stratospheric aircraft for ISR

Head of Supply Chain

Procurement & Sourcing +1Updated on Nov 14
Full-timeEl Segundo, CA, USA

About the Job

Requirements

  • At least 7 years of supply chain, procurement, material planning, or manufacturing operations experience in a hardware environment.
  • Experience leading a team and scaling a supply chain through a production ramp.
  • A record of negotiating supplier agreements and resolving difficult capacity, quality, or delivery problems.
  • Strong understanding of bills of materials, enterprise resource planning/material requirements planning, inventory control, and the connection between engineering changes and material demand.
  • Ability to move between strategic decisions and hands-on execution without losing detail.
  • Ability to work at the El Segundo factory five days a week.

Responsibilities

  • Build and lead the supply chain that turns aircraft designs into repeatable production and reliable field operations.
  • Own procurement, material planning, warehousing, and logistics, working closely with engineering, manufacturing, finance, and flight operations.
  • Translate the aircraft build schedule and field demand into purchasing priorities, clear-to-build reviews, inventory policies, and supplier commitments.
  • Own critical supplier relationships, negotiations, capacity planning, lead-time reduction, and practical mitigation of sole-source risk.
  • Build a team of Buyer/Planners responsible for procurement and supply planning across electrical, mechanical, propulsion, composites, and raw materials.
  • Lead receiving, putaway, kitting, inventory control, and delivery to the production line, establishing clear ownership from the receiving dock to the point of use.
  • Make ION and the underlying bill of materials, item, supplier, lead-time, and inventory data dependable enough to run the business.
  • Coordinate inbound, outbound, inter-site, and field-support material flows with the logistics lead.
  • Partner with engineering and quality on supplier qualification, acceptance requirements, corrective actions, and changes that affect the supply base.
  • Hire and develop the team, set clear expectations, and improve on-time delivery, inventory accuracy, material availability, and total cost.

Desired Qualifications

  • Built supply chain at an aerospace, defense, robotics, or other hardware startup.
  • Experience with ION or a comparable modern manufacturing enterprise resource planning system.
  • Worked across electronics, precision mechanical components, batteries, or composite materials.
  • Improved warehouse operations across multiple production sites.

About the Company

Icarus

Solar-powered stratospheric aircraft for ISR

Icarus builds APOLLO, a solar-powered autonomous aircraft that aims to fly continuously in the stratosphere (above 60,000 feet) for weeks without landing. It covers more than 1,000 square miles with ultra-high-resolution, real-time sensing and delivers high-throughput, low-latency connectivity directly to ground devices. This platform is positioned as a cost-effective, rapidly deployable alternative to satellite constellations for persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and resilient communications, with a primary focus on defense and security customers. Founded in 2023 and based in Los Angeles, Icarus was part of Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch.

Company size
1-10
Company stage
Seed
Total funding
$280K
Headquarters
El Segundo, CA
Founded
2023

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