Head of Facilities
Operations - Villeneuve, CH
The position
- Crew
- Operations
- Location
- Villeneuve, CH
- Type of contract
- Full-time
Your role
PAVE Space is building LYOBA, a heavy kick stage moving over 4-tonne payloads from LEO to high-energy orbits in under 24 hours. Real hardware, real funding, real milestones, and a building programme that has to keep pace with the engineering. That's the seat.
The Chavalon test site is under construction, the cleanroom is starting now, the Villeneuve workshop is coming online, and the next propulsion test site needs to be found and built within a year. The Villeneuve footprint will keep expanding as headcount grows. The CTO is doing this job today, and it's the single biggest thing keeping him off engineering. You'll take it over, on a timeline measured in weeks, not quarters.
You will own
Villeneuve (hall and admin), Chavalon, and future sites, from lease to lightbulbs
Construction project management for cleanroom, workshop, test stands, propellant storage, and future production facilities
Expansion of the Villeneuve footprint as headcount grows
Electrical infrastructure: distribution, capacity planning, high-current circuits for CNC and test equipment
HVAC and ventilation for workshop, chemical lab, cleanroom, passivation room
Lease negotiation, permitting, and coordination with cantonal authorities (ECA Vaud, OFEV, cantonal construction offices)
Test site search and buildout for the next propulsion facility
Contractor management end to end: mechanical, electrical, HVAC, civil, cleanroom specialists
Capex programmes on facilities; the business case, the procurement, the delivery, the acceptance
Facilities safety infrastructure in coordination with HSE: spill containment, fire suppression, blast walls, alarms, maintenance programme
What we are looking for
8+ years leading industrial facilities construction and buildout projects
Direct experience delivering test facilities, cleanrooms, or high-hazard industrial installations from concept to commissioning
Track record managing multi-million capex programmes across mechanical, electrical, HVAC, and civil disciplines
Comfortable owning contractor relationships end to end: selection, negotiation, execution, disputes
Swiss regulatory and permitting experience, cantonal construction offices, ECA, OFEV, or equivalent for other cantons
Reads engineering drawings across disciplines, and can push back on a contractor's proposal when the numbers don't hold
Comfortable on-site in workwear, not just at the desk
French and English, both fluently
Nice to have: propellant storage or hazardous-materials facility construction; test stand or launch site buildout experience; familiarity with cantonal Vaud construction and permitting landscape; experience running multiple concurrent construction programmes across sites.
You will fit if
You take pride in a building that works the day it opens.
You'd rather walk the site with the contractor than review the drawings alone at your desk.
You know when a contractor's estimate is right, when it's high, and when it's wrong, and you don't back down from any of the three.
You see the buildings as part of the vehicle; a bad workshop makes a bad engine.
You'd rather run four construction programmes in parallel than be bored on one.
Fully on-site in Villeneuve (VD), with our test site in Chavalon twenty minutes away and more sites coming. There's no facilities team to inherit, no established construction pipeline, no framework contracts with the trades. You'd be the one setting all of that up, while the CTO hands you back the hours he's been spending on it.
We are building to ship, grounded on real hardware, real funding, real milestones. Apply to contribute, surrounded by people as sharp as you are. And if this isn't you but you know that person, send them our way.