Manufacturing Manager

In this role, you will be the driving force behind the manufacturing operations of Fox Robotics. 

You: 

• Have a passion for creating systems and nurturing them until they are performing as required by the business.
• Put safety before anything else and aren’t afraid to stand your ground when something is unsafe. 
• Value emotional intelligence and will foster a healthy cooperative company culture. 
• Know how to expertly resolve conflict with finesse and compassion. 
• Can see through the symptoms of superficial problems and work on solving the root cause of interpersonal quibbles. 
• Have the skills to calculate the ideal buffer sizes, create spaghetti plots, balance the load across multiple lines producing a single product, and can act as the driving force to turn the theory into practice. 
• Can rely on your intuition about process flow to find an optimal manufacturing flow
• Have worked as a Senior Manufacturing Engineer or Manufacturing Manager in a high mix or high volume plant. 
• Have spent time leading Lean Manufacturing Initiatives like 5S+, Kaizen, 8D Analysis, or conducted data centric quality analysis.  
• Are experienced with multiple ERP systems and have seen at least 1 ERP rollout in your career. 
• Have a degree in Manufacturing, Industrial, Mechanical, Aerospace, or Electrical Engineering OR you’ve spent your career running circles around “engineering types”. 
• Know how to create strong quality systems that focus effort where it is most needed. 
• Understand the Theory of Constraints and can transform fledgling production environments into world class manufacturing facilities. 
• Have a strong desire to create a large-scale manufacturing plant from scratch. 
• Understand the value that humans bring to the workplace. 
• Will work intently to solve problems that threaten production goals. 
• Have felt tied down or stifled at large corporations because they move so slowly. 
• Know your own limitations and can rely on the expertise of others without feeling threatened or intimidated. 
• Are extremely curious about everything. 
• Have a strong desire to create a 21st century workplace that will change our industry, the local economy, and disrupt the way warehouses operate around the world.  
• Are comfortable communicating with the entire chain of command within organizations internally and externally connected to your duties. 
• Have been heavily involved with Purchasing, Cost Accounting, and Operations management in manufacturing settings. 
• Possess unwavering character and can keep your cool under pressure. 
• Thrive in high-stakes environments where you are personally held accountable for the financial well-being of your slice of the organization.
• Have 10+ years of experience working in manufacturing environments. 

People-Centric Responsibilities:

• Coach your team through exceptional hiring, project management, mentoring, and one-on-ones. You will remove impediments, identify growth opportunities, and celebrate your team’s successes.
• Help your team balance priorities. You know that investments are crucial to build a modern and efficient production line.
• Own scheduling production, allocating resources, identifying internal inventory shortages,. You will perform capacity planning and partner with product managers to estimate timelines and manage a cone of uncertainty.
• Work with Quality, MFG Engineering, Product Engineering, Purchasing, and Finance to ensure that the manufacturing line is operating efficiently and safely.  

Technical Responsibilities:

• Know what makes a good work instruction, QC checklist, Non-Conforming Product report, and can design the systems required to monitor valuable KPIs.    

Qualifications:

• You’ve been a successful manufacturing engineer, manager, and leader.
• You are deeply familiar with agile (or similar frameworks) and project management ideologies. You have experience implementing industry-standard best practices for managing a team of software engineers.
• You are an outstanding communicator, both verbally and in writing. You naturally document plans for transparency so future employees can quickly get up to speed.
• You have excellent judgment and excel at making difficult decisions by collecting information, asking questions, and weighing trade-offs. You are quick to admit when you have been wrong. You are comfortable being vulnerable about what you learned.
• You are a systems thinker that enjoys challenges and figuring out how to make things better. In stressful situations, you are the calm, steady voice of reason.
• When resolving conflict, you don’t fear difficult conversations. You understand the value of direct, transparent, respectful, and kind feedback, knowing that it’s a gift your teammates can use to grow.
• You are an active listener with humility and empathy. You naturally build relationships with your team and peers. You often debate the other side of issues and try on other people’s perspectives so that you can learn new things. When you have to make difficult team requests, you effectively communicate the context and urgency. You’re excellent at connecting big goals to your team’s tasks and ensuring they understand how their work is meaningful and essential.
• You are conscientious when it comes to hiring people for your team and work actively to identify where they can improve. You prioritize hiring someone that is a long-term complement to the team vs. someone who thinks like everyone else.
• Diversity and inclusion are central to your hiring priorities. You know that you can’t have a world-class team unless it is made up of a diverse set of people with a strong representation of backgrounds and perspectives.

BONUS POINTS: 

• You can fix almost anything
• You have a passion for robots or automation
• You have experience at small companies or startup environments 
• You are a morning person
• You are forklift-certified

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We make robots that work.

We envision a world where robots serve as a human multiplier for dull and dangerous work. The warehousing industry, our initial area of focus, sees more than 52,000 cases of injuries every year in the US. Our first product is an automated trailer unloader that quickly demonstrates measurable value to our users by both improving efficiency while also increasing safety.

By empowering people to do more with less, we can help grow the economy, create better-paying jobs, and generate revenue to fund social services. 

With runway to go the distance, join our mission-driven team as we grow our customer-facing deployment operations team.