Chief Production Engineer

Required Skills & Experience

• 10-15+ years of Industrial, Manufacturing, and/or Production Engineering within Drones, Aerospace, or Ground Robotics/autonomous systems
• Portrayed technical Engineering leadership through driving engineering integration efforts into production results
• Experience resolving obsolescence issues, NPI, mishap investigation, FAI (first article inspection)

Job Description

A lead defense drone contractor sitting in Petaluma, CA is looking to hire a Chief Production Engineer that will be working onsite on a 9/80 schedule (alternating Fridays off) full time. This Chief Production Engineer will be supporting their Group 3 vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) fixed-wing uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) built for multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. In Petaluma, this is the main production site for this product, with one main production line that involves lots of customization for their UAV. This Engineer will be responsible for more of the development side of the product, focusing on production, dealing with obsolescence issues and sustaining engineering change orders and various issues that could come up. He/she will be helping to technically lead, assist in new product integration and make decisions for their Engineering group of (30+ individuals), alongside a deployed team of 10-15 additional dotted line engineers. This Chief Engineer will spend 50% of their time resolving problems coming in from Production and/or the Field and handling their "sustaining projects" for ex: integrating a new camera and helping to lead those efforts. The other 50% of their responsibilities will be leading mishap investigation. This person might be required to travel but not often (potentially to visit other sister sites in Oregon or Kansas) or to meet customers in person. This role will be paying between $170,000-$272,000 with an annual bonus on top of base salary.