About the Role
We’re looking for a Head of Manufacturing to build and lead our production systems from first principles—taking designs from R&D benches to scaled production. You will own manufacturing architecture, tooling, workflows, and quality systems for multiple product lines, driving the delivery of hundreds to thousands of high-reliability units per year.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll work side-by-side with design, hardware, and software engineers to ensure our systems can move seamlessly from prototype to production while maintaining the highest standards of quality and reliability demanded by our military customers.
This is an on-site position located in Marina Del Rey, CA.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement quality control measures, including inspection criteria, test plans, and non-conformance resolution processes to ensure adherence to specifications and industry standards.
- Develop, document, and optimize manufacturing processes for electro-mechanical assemblies.
- Early to late stage collaboration with electrical, RF, firmware and mechanical design engineers to ensure manufacturability, DFM/DFA of electro-mechanical assemblies.
- Conduct root cause analysis and implement continuous improvement initiatives to enhance manufacturing processes, reduce costs, and improve product quality and reliability.
- Develop innovative incentives, programs, and processes to drive quality and output yield higher, faster.
- Provide day-to-day support for the production floor, resolving build issues, updating work instructions, and improving yields.
- Create manufacturing strategies that balance cost efficiency with the ability to rapidly pivot to new product lines or ramp production to meet urgent demand.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in mechanical, electrical. manufacturing engineering,or related filed.
- A relentless focus on mission assurance, quality, and detail, while deeply curious about manufacturing and committed to ongoing growth.
- 5+ years of demonstrated manufacturing experience in high-precision electro-mechanical manufacturing including at least 3 years in leadership roles managing multi-disciplinary teams.
- Experience and ability to build manufacturing lines, processes, and teams from the ground up to be flexible, quickly effective, iterative, and adaptable.
- Proven success taking complex electro-mechanical systems from prototype through full-scale production (hundreds to thousands of units annually).
- Knowledge of manufacturing enterprise systems (MES/ERP) and how metrics drive operational and financial outcomes.
- Proficiency in interpreting engineering drawings, specifications, and technical documents.
- Experience viewing documents from manufacturing tools and software, such as Altium and NX.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills—able to translate engineering needs into operational actions and results.
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Hands-on background with production test automation, tooling, and process design.
- Experience in developing, implementing, and utilizing digital manufacturing tools for design and analysis.
- Harness & PCBA fabrication experience including prior work with or setup/modification/monitoring SMT processes.
- Proficient in CAD software and familiar with modern manufacturing technologies and automation.
- Software scripting experience in any language.
- Experience in environmental testing (i.e. vibration, thermal, pneumatic testing)
- Experience making cross-functional design decisions and trade-offs.
Why You’ll Love Working Here
- High-impact products deployed within months, not years.
- The opportunity to architect manufacturing from the ground up.
- A mission-driven, elite engineering environment with room to innovate and lead.
- Competitive compensation and fast-tracked career growth as part of a tight, high-performance team.
Additional Information:
Compensation bands are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual level and base pay is determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on job-related skills, education, experience, technical capabilities and internal equity. In addition to base salary, for full-time hires, you may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of stock options, and access to medical, vision & dental coverage as well as access to a 401(k) retirement plan.
To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.
Heaviside is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Heaviside is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, physical disability or any other legally protected status.
