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Job Summary The Plant Manager is responsible for the overall leadership, performance, and operational effectiveness of a manufacturing facility supporting system prototyping, advanced developmental machining, and integration/testing of large defense systems. This is a ‘brown-field’ facility start-up opportunity that will support multiple rapidly growing programs within Leidos’ Defense portfolio. The Plant Manager role provides strategic and hands-on leadership across production, manufacturing engineering, quality, materials management, facilities, and talent acquisition to ensure safe, compliant, efficient, and predictable execution of customer commitments.
The successful candidate will lead the non-recurring effort to acquire/activate equipment at a recently acquired facility in the Huntsville area. This leader will also establish a culture of operational excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement while balancing the unique requirements of defense product integration and test with the throughput, process control, and scalability demands of high-volume electronics production. The Plant Manager will drive performance across safety, quality, cost, delivery, inventory, and productivity while developing organizational capability and ensuring the facility is positioned to support current programs and future growth.
Key Responsibilities
- Plant Operations & Production Execution: Lead all manufacturing and production activities, including missile subsystem integration, system-level assembly, test operations, and high-volume electronics manufacturing. Establish daily operating rhythms, production priorities, and performance reviews to achieve customer delivery commitments.
- Safety & Regulatory Compliance: Foster a zero-harm culture and ensure compliance with applicable environmental, health, safety, hazardous-material handling, and facility requirements. Maintain disciplined work practices appropriate to defense manufacturing and test environments.
- Quality & Mission Assurance: Partner with Quality and Engineering to maintain rigorous process controls, product traceability, configuration management, workmanship standards, test documentation, and nonconformance resolution. Ensure compliance with applicable customer, contractual, and regulatory requirements.
- Delivery & Production Planning: Translate program demand and customer commitments into executable production plans, staffing requirements, material priorities, equipment capacity, and test schedules. Identify constraints and implement recovery plans to protect on-time delivery.
- Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement: Lead lean manufacturing, root-cause analysis, corrective and preventive actions, waste reduction, standard work, and production-flow improvements. Improve first-pass yield, cycle time, labor productivity, equipment effectiveness, and overall operational performance.
- Financial & Business Performance: Own plant operating budgets, labor and overhead performance, manufacturing cost, capital planning, and resource utilization. Develop and execute initiatives that improve cost competitiveness without compromising safety, quality, or delivery.
- Supply Chain & Materials Management: Partner with Supply Chain, Procurement, and Planning to improve material availability, inventory accuracy, supplier performance, work-in-process flow, and shortage resolution. Establish effective escalation mechanisms for material and component constraints.
- People Leadership & Organizational Development: Lead and develop a high-performing organization spanning production supervisors, manufacturing personnel, technicians, engineers, and support functions. Establish clear accountability, workforce development plans, cross-training, succession planning, and staffing strategies aligned with production demand.
- Equipment, Facilities & Capital Investment: Ensure production equipment, test assets, utilities, infrastructure, and manufacturing workspaces are reliable and capable of meeting current and projected demand. Prioritize maintenance, equipment acquisition, facility modifications, and capital investments based on capacity, risk, and business value.
- Performance Management & Reporting: Establish and monitor key performance indicators, including safety, quality, on-time delivery, throughput, first-pass yield, scrap and rework, labor productivity, inventory, schedule attainment, and cost performance. Communicate operational risks, recovery actions, and business results to senior leadership.
- Cross-Functional & Customer Collaboration: Work closely with Program Management, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, Finance, and customer representatives to align production execution with contractual requirements, program milestones, technical readiness, and business objectives.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations Management, Business, or a related discipline, plus twelve (12) years or more of relevant experience. Equivalent relevant experience may be considered in lieu of educational credentials.
- Significant progressive leadership experience in manufacturing operations, including responsibility for production performance, workforce leadership, and operational results.
- Demonstrated experience managing complex manufacturing environments with demanding quality, delivery, cost, and compliance requirements.
- Experience leading production teams and cross-functional organizations in a factory or multi-workstream manufacturing operation.
- Proven ability to develop and execute production plans, manage constraints, allocate resources, and recover performance against challenging delivery commitments.
- Demonstrated understanding of manufacturing quality systems, root-cause analysis, corrective action, process control, and continuous improvement.
- Experience managing operating budgets, labor costs, productivity, capital requirements, and manufacturing performance metrics.
- Strong leadership, communication, problem-solving, and organizational skills, with the ability to engage effectively from the production floor through senior leadership.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in defense, aerospace, or other highly regulated manufacturing environments.
- Direct experience with complex machining or complex system assembly/integration/testing in a high-mix, low-volume manufacturing environment.
- Experience leading facility start-ups, capital activation, and site construction planning and execution.
- Experience implementing lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, statistical process control, Theory of Constraints, or other structured operational excellence methodologies.
- Experience scaling production, activating manufacturing facilities, introducing new products, expanding capacity, or transitioning programs from development and low-rate initial production to higher production rates.
- Experience with ERP/MRP systems, manufacturing execution systems (MES), production scheduling, and data-driven performance management.
- Experience leading capital equipment investments, facility modernization, test-capacity expansion, and manufacturing layout optimization.
- Experience managing multiple product lines with differing production volumes, process requirements, technical complexity, and customer priorities.
Core Competencies
- Operational Leadership: Establishes clear priorities, drives execution, and maintains accountability for plant-wide results.
- Safety & Quality Mindset: Embeds safety, product integrity, process discipline, and compliance into daily operations.
- Manufacturing Excellence: Applies data-driven problem solving and continuous improvement to improve throughput, yield, and cost.
- Execution & Accountability: Converts business objectives into actionable plans, measurable commitments, and sustained results.
- Strategic & Financial Acumen: Balances near-term production demands with long-term capacity, capital, workforce, and cost objectives.
- People Development: Builds capable teams, develops future leaders, and creates a culture of ownership and continuous learning.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Aligns Operations, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, and Program Management around shared outcomes.
- Change Leadership: Leads organizational, process, technology, and capacity changes while sustaining production performance.
- Customer Focus: Maintains a strong commitment to customer requirements, contractual performance, product reliability, and on-time delivery.
Key Performance Expectations Success in this role will be measured by sustained improvement and execution across the following areas:
- Safety performance and compliance with applicable requirements.
- On-time delivery, schedule attainment, and achievement of program commitments.
- Product quality, first-pass yield, scrap, rework, and defect reduction.
- Manufacturing throughput, cycle time, labor productivity, and equipment utilization.
- Operating cost, budget performance, inventory control, and working capital.
- Integration and test capacity, production readiness, and execution against planned milestones.
- Workforce capability, employee development, staffing effectiveness, and organizational stability.
- Continuous improvement results, production scalability, and readiness for future program demand.
Candidate must be a resident of the North Alabama area or willing to relocate to the Huntsville - North Alabama, AL area.
Candidate must be a US Citizen and be able to obtain and maintain a Secret Clearance. If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo - because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 - and moving faster than anyone else dares.
Original Posting:
November 3, 2026 For U.S. Positions: While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.
Pay Range:
Pay Range $139,100.00 - $251,450.00 The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.