Manufacturing Engineering Lead
Leads manufacturing strategy and hands-on production scale-up for a complex robotic turret, moving the product from prototype builds to repeatable low-rate production. The role requires 10+ years of shipped hardware experience, strong DFM and quality-system expertise, and the ability to establish suppliers, processes, documentation, and the future manufacturing organization.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Define the manufacturing strategy, including make/buy decisions and the roadmap for in-house production, suppliers, and contract manufacturers.
- Build early units hands-on and create manufacturing instructions, travelers, fixtures, and process documentation.
- Establish routings, assembly and test stations, tooling, fixtures, material flow, and scalable production processes.
- Drive design for manufacturability and assembly, tolerance and process-capability analysis, and part-count reduction.
- Select and manage suppliers and contract manufacturers, including sourcing, qualification, first-article inspection, and corrective actions.
- Establish quality processes for incoming inspection, in-process checks, end-of-line testing, nonconformance, corrective action, serialization, and traceability.
- Maintain manufacturing BOMs, revisions, and as-built records; help shape MRP/ERP tooling and PDM release processes.
- Plan and execute engineering builds, pilot runs, and low-rate initial production.
- Model unit costs across production volumes and prioritize engineering and sourcing improvements.
- Help define the future manufacturing organization as volume increases.
Requirements
- 10+ years of manufacturing engineering or operations experience with shipped hardware products, ideally robotics or complex electromechanical systems.
- Prior experience taking a product from prototype to production, including process development, make/buy decisions, and hands-on ownership.
- Fluency in DFM/DFA, PFMEA, process capability, tolerance analysis, fixture and tooling design, work instructions, line layout, and production flow.
- Practical experience building inspection, testing, and corrective-action processes that can mature into a quality management system.
- Supplier and contract-manufacturer management experience, including sourcing, qualification, and first-article inspection.
- Willingness to serve as the initial manufacturing function while establishing scalable processes.
- Efficient, low-ego, collaborative working style.
Nice-to-Haves
- Experience establishing manufacturing at a venture-backed hardware startup.
- Familiarity with firearms, defense, aerospace, medical, or other regulated manufacturing.
- Working knowledge of ISO 9001 and AS9100.
- Experience implementing or administering an MRP/ERP system at a small company.
- Experience with ITAR-regulated manufacturing and export-controlled data.
Compensation & Benefits
- Meaningful early equity.
- Direct influence over the product and technology roadmap.
- Employer-paid medical, dental, and vision premiums; 50% coverage of dependent healthcare premiums.
- Unlimited PTO.
- New prototyping lab with NVIDIA Jetsons, high-end oscilloscopes, and 3D printers.
- Relocation assistance.
Skills
Dfm/Dfa, Pfmea, Process Capability, Tolerance Analysis, Fixture Design, Tooling Design, Work Instructions, Line Layout, Supplier Management, First-Article Inspection, Corrective Action, Mrp/Erp, Pdm, Bom Management, Itar
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