ZT Systems

Sr. Staff Product Operations Engineer

ZT Systems$116K — $155K *
Manufacturing & Automotive
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in engineering; Master's preferred
  • 8-15 years in an engineering role; 6-12 years with Master's
  • Experience in manufacturing, test, quality, or systems engineering
  • Demonstrated experience with customer-facing engineering groups
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
  • Proven ability to thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments
  • Experience leading cross-functional teams in global settings

Responsibilities

  • Lead technical interface among customer engineering, product design, and factory teams
  • Drive translation of customer requirements into actionable technical inputs
  • Serve as the bridge between customer needs and manufacturing feasibility
  • Identify and resolve manufacturability issues across product lifecycle
  • Partner with NPI teams to embed customer requirements early
  • Oversee complex cross-functional operations and manufacturing issues
  • Represent factory concerns in customer engineering discussions

Benefits

  • Bonus opportunities
  • Paid time off
  • Generous 401k match
  • Tuition reimbursement
  • Wellbeing resources
Full Job Description
About The Role

The Product Operations Engineering team serves as the technical bridge between product design engineering, customers, and our global manufacturing organization.  As Sr Staff Product Operations Engineer, you will bring a blend of deep manufacturing expertise, knowledge of the product design lifecycle, and strong cross-functional leadership to ensure customer requirements are accurately defined, interpreted, and translated into actionable direction for manufacturing.


What You Will Do

This role requires a unique blend of engineering depth, analytical rigor, and stakeholder leadership.  You will triangulate between customers, design engineering, and factory teams; step in as the "glue" when ownership of technical needs is unclear; and help shape manufacturing readiness for hyperscale compute, storage, and high-density AI GPU systems.

You will play a critical role in ensuring a seamless customer experience - fostering transparent collaboration, supporting visible process excellence, and contributing to high-quality products landing at customer data centers.

  • Lead the technical interface between customer engineering, product design, and factory teams, ensuring clarity and alignment of requirements.

  • Drive the interpretation, analysis, and translation of customer requirements into actionable technical inputs for NPI, manufacturing engineering, test engineering, and quality engineering.

  • Serve as the bridge between customer engineering, product design engineering, and factory operations—balancing customer needs with manufacturing feasibility.

  • Triangulate between quality, factory, and product design teams to identify, prioritize, and resolve manufacturability issues across both NPI and MP product lifecycle stages.  Oversee the resolution of gaps, ensuring continuous customer engagement and internal accountability.

  • Partner closely with NPI and the technical launch teams during new product launches to embed customer-driven requirements early and accurately.

  • Drive ownership of complex, cross-functional operations and manufacturing issues, serving as the focal point when accountability spans multiple organizations.

  • Represent the factory in customer engineering discussions, ensuring that product design decisions account for manufacturability, yield, and operational feasibility.

  • Combine a deep knowledge of factory systems, product lifecycle management, and hyperscale customer context into a unified technical perspective that drives clear prioritization and decision-making.

  • Apply engineering expertise to guide the development of solutions that are robust, scalable, and manufacturable.

  • Champion a culture of continuous learning, analytical rigor, and growth mindset within the organization.

  • Influence and inspire cross-functional teams to take ownership of customer requirements and drive manufacturing execution with integrity.

  • Operate with a sense of urgency to ensure customer needs are met in fast-moving, high-pressure environments.


What You Bring

The right person for this role is an agent of change and has exceptional analytical capabilities, thrives in a fast-paced environment, loves problem-solving, is a good communicator, and is passionate about enabling the future of cloud computing.

  • Education: Bachelor's degree in engineering (e.g. manufacturing, industrial, electrical, systems, or related field).  Master's degree preferred.

  • 8-15 years of relevant experience in an engineering role, or 6-12 years with a master's degree.

  • Experience in one or more of: manufacturing engineering, test engineering, quality engineering, electrical engineering, or systems engineering.

  • Demonstrated experience working with or alongside customer-facing engineering groups.

  • Ability to clearly articulate technical issues and requirements across diverse stakeholder groups; comfortable interfacing effectively at all organizational levels.

  • Comfortable working across geographies, time zones, and cultures to align distributed teams.

  • Strong background in analytical methods, structure problem solving, and data-driven decision making.

  • Proven ability to thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced environments with changing priorities and deadlines.

  • Experience leading cross-functional teams in global, matrixed environments is highly desirable.

  • Ability to convert complex (often data driven) topics to clear overviews and insights.

  • Proven ability to perform effectively in a demanding environment with changing workloads and deadlines.

  • Fluency with continuous improvement / lean programs.

  • Fluency with Microsoft Office tools (Outlook, Excel, and Word).

ZT Systems assesses market data to ensure a competitive compensation package is created for all our employees. The typical base salary for this position is expected to be between $116,250 - $155,000. If hired, the final base salary will be determined on an individual basis taking into consideration experience, skills, knowledge, education and/or certifications.

Base salary is just one component of ZT Systems total rewards philosophy. We take pride in offering a wide range of benefits and perks that appeal to the variety of needs across our diverse employee base. Other rewards may include bonus, paid time off, generous 401k match, tuition reimbursement, wellbeing resources, and more.

We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this opportunity but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

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About ZT Systems

ZT Systems is a privately held original design manufacturer of data center servers, storage and embedded computing systems. ZT Systems is headquartered in the United States with additional facilities in Canada, China, and the Netherlands. The company designs and manufactures a wide range of computing systems, from workstations to high-performance computing clusters, and provides customized solutions for cloud computing, big data, and other applications. ZT Systems serves a variety of industries, including finance, healthcare, government, and education.
Learn more about ZT Systems
Size
1,000 employees
Industry
Founded
1994

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