The RoleThis role leads a fast-moving team of Technical Program Managers and Manufacturing Engineers responsible for delivering complex, long-cycle customer programs across Strategic and Core accounts. You serve as the translation layer between bespoke customer relationships and standardized factory execution; absorbing customer nuance upstream so production teams receive consistent, reliable inputs regardless of customer. Success is measured by revenue growth, delivery performance, customer-facing quality, and the cleanliness and accuracy of what enters production.
What You'll Do- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Technical Program Managers and Manufacturing Engineers responsible for delivering complex, long-cycle customer programs across Strategic and Core accounts.
- Serve as an escalation point and decision-maker for your customers; building trust with primes and institutional customers, navigating procurement and approval processes, and leveraging those relationships to protect and grow revenue.
- Drive tight alignment between manufacturing, operations, engineering, and commercial teams to drive customer satisfaction, delivery predictability and retention across established platforms and production lifecycles.
- Own program status visibility end-to-end. Run open order reviews, maintain accurate delivery data, and issue clear, proactive status communications to customers. Be transparent on what customers need to know while exercising judgment on issues that can be resolved without escalation.
- Own commercial hygiene across your customer base. Drive customers to update purchase orders, confirm need dates, and release engineering changes in real time. When customers are slow to act, apply appropriate pressure through the right relationship channels to get documents updated at the source. Internal workarounds are not a substitute for accurate customer records.
- Own the accuracy of order entry, WO configuration, and revision processing. Zero-defect inputs to the factory are a baseline expectation. Every PO, revision, and engineering change must be processed completely and correctly before it touches the floor. Errors should be treated as defects: tracked, root-caused, and eliminated.
- Own core quality and delivery workflows for your accounts: PPAP compliance, corrective action management, customer return processes, and work order configuration standards.
- Partner with peer TPM leadership to define and maintain factory-facing process standards across the org to ensure consistent production inputs regardless of customer type.
- Build scalable processes and tooling to improve throughput, forecasting accuracy, and operational visibility; optimized for accounts with recurring execution patterns.
- Identify systemic gaps and collaborate with product and engineering teams to prioritize capability development that improves team efficiency on mature programs.
- Lead operational reviews, business reviews, and program health assessments with internal stakeholders and external customers.
Measures of Success- Delivery: on-time delivery performance against committed customer schedules.
- Quality: customer-facing quality metrics including return rates, yield, PPAP compliance, and customer scorecards.
- Customer health: account satisfaction and relationship strength.
- Operational cleanliness: escape rate into production (order entry, WO configuration, or customer data gaps), and speed and accuracy of PO and revision processing from customer signal to clean system input.
- Revenue: partner with sales and production teams to drive growth across customer base.
What We're Looking For- 3+ years of direct leadership experience in technical program management, operations, manufacturing, engineering, or related technical industry.
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Operations, Manufacturing, or a related technical discipline (or equivalent practical experience).
- Proven ability to build structure, develop people, and maintain output quality across a cross-functional group.
- Detail-oriented with high standards for data accuracy and system cleanliness.
- Excellent communication and consolidation skills, delivering large, complex narratives with clarity and brevity.
- Demonstrated evidence of influencing without authority.
- Demonstrated ability making technical and operational decisions with incomplete information.
What Will Set You Apart- 5+ years of direct leadership experience in technical program management, operations, manufacturing, engineering, or related technical industry.
- Strong organizational and coaching skills with the ability to develop teams focused on efficiency, consistency, and retention.
- Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills, particularly with process-heavy, institutional organizations.
- Deep experience managing programs within aerospace, defense, or regulated manufacturing environments with long production lifecycles.
- Demonstrated ability to drive commercial accountability with large, slow-moving customers, keeping purchase orders, need dates, and part definitions accurate at the source rather than managing around customer inaction internally.
- Experience owning or standardizing factory-facing delivery processes, translating complex customer requirements into repeatable, scalable internal workflows.
- Experience contributing to operational excellence or continuous improvement initiatives on mature, high-volume programs.
Benefits for Full-time Employees- Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans for employees
- 401k
- Relocation support may be provided for certain situations, based on business need.
- Flexible vacation policy
ITAR RequirementsTo 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.
