Hardware Strategic Sourcing & Manufacturing Partnerships Manager
Leads strategic sourcing and manufacturing partnerships for AI hardware, owning partner selection, negotiation, onboarding, production ramp, and governance across JDM, CM, and ODM ecosystems. Requires 10+ years of hardware sourcing or supply-chain leadership, strong commercial judgment, and technical credibility.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Develop and execute strategic sourcing and manufacturing partnership strategies across JDM, CM, and ODM engagement models.
- Lead end-to-end RFI and RFP processes, including requirements definition, market outreach, competitive bids, stakeholder evaluations, and partner selection recommendations.
- Evaluate manufacturing partners across technical capabilities, engineering resources, manufacturing readiness, quality, capacity, financial stability, security, supply-chain resilience, commercial competitiveness, and strategic alignment.
- Negotiate and structure agreements covering services, statements of work, engineering and manufacturing responsibilities, nonrecurring engineering, tooling, pricing, capacity, intellectual property, warranties, service levels, and program terms.
- Establish commercial and operational ownership for design, engineering, manufacturing, quality, inventory, supply commitments, and escalation procedures.
- Develop cost and pricing structures and apply should-cost analysis, open-book pricing, benchmarking, and cost-down planning.
- Lead partner onboarding, manufacturing readiness, design transfer, new product introduction, production ramp, and ongoing operations.
- Build executive and working relationships with manufacturing partners as the primary commercial point of contact.
- Establish partner governance through scorecards, executive business reviews, forecasts, corrective action plans, escalations, and continuous improvement.
- Identify and mitigate manufacturing capacity, supplier concentration, quality, delivery, geopolitical, and continuity risks.
- Develop repeatable frameworks for partner selection, contracting, onboarding, performance management, and ERP, MRP, and PLM requirements.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in strategic sourcing, manufacturing partnerships, supplier management, procurement, or supply-chain leadership within hardware, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, or technology infrastructure.
- Direct experience selecting, negotiating with, and managing JDM, CM, and ODM partners for complex hardware programs.
- Understanding of JDM, CM, and ODM business models, including design ownership, engineering responsibilities, manufacturing execution, intellectual property, commercial structures, and operational risk.
- Experience managing partner engagements from RFI/RFP through evaluation, selection, contracting, onboarding, NPI, production ramp, and ongoing relationship management.
- Strong negotiation skills and experience structuring engineering and manufacturing agreements.
- Expertise in manufacturing cost models, should-cost analysis, open-book pricing, total cost of ownership, and cost reduction.
- Experience bringing new manufacturing programs online and coordinating technical, commercial, and operational readiness.
- Technical credibility working with hardware engineering and manufacturing teams on rack-scale systems, compute infrastructure, networking, storage, silicon, or related hardware.
- Strong analytical judgment across cost, quality, capacity, schedule, technical capability, and operational risk.
- Track record of building trusted relationships with manufacturing partners and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Ability to operate in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment and build scalable processes.
Nice-to-Haves
- Familiarity with manufacturing ecosystems across Asia.
Compensation and Benefits
- Candidates may need to meet legal status requirements under applicable export control laws and regulations.
Skills
Strategic Sourcing, Supplier Management, Supply Chain, Jdm, Contract Manufacturing, Odm, Rfi/Rfp, Contract Negotiation, Should-Cost Analysis, Open-Book Pricing, Total Cost Of Ownership, New Product Introduction, ERP, Mrp, Plm
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