Director of Manufacturing

Pyka is seeking a dynamic and experienced Director of Manufacturing to lead our manufacturing operations and drive operational excellence across production, procurement, inventory management, quality assurance, logistics, and facility operations.

Reporting directly to the CEO/CTO, you will play a critical role in building and managing a world-class manufacturing team and implementing efficient systems to support Pyka's growth and success in the electric aircraft industry. By joining Pyka, you will contribute to advancing society's transition to using electric aircraft and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of sustainable aviation.

About Pyka

Pyka’s goal is to provide society with a new form of safe, clean, and cost-effective transportation enabled by autonomous electric aviation.

To get there, we’re taking a different approach than most. We're applying our technologies to every industry where autonomous electric aircraft can be useful, starting with the highest value and most dangerous jobs. In doing so, we're building game-changing products manufactured at scale, while perfecting the safety, reliability, and capabilities of our autonomy engine and electric propulsion systems. 

We design, develop and manufacture an ecosystem of technologies including proprietary flight control software, avionics, high power density motors, motor controllers, batteries, and custom carbon-fiber composite airframes.

Today, we supply autonomous electric aircraft for cargo transport and crop protection to real-world customers across four separate continents and have secured industry-first regulatory approvals from the FAA. 

Our cargo aircraft enables remote connectivity, enhances express delivery networks, and ensures fast and reliable shipping of critical supplies to areas in need. Our crop protection aircraft offers agricultural services providers and farmers an autonomous tool to make aerial application safer, more precise, and less harmful to surrounding environments. Both vehicles are highly economical to operate, easy to deploy, and significantly reduce CO2 emissions in their respective industries. 

What you work on at Pyka makes people’s lives better now and brings the future of electric aviation one step closer each day. 

Responsibilities

Build, manage, and inspire a rapidly growing team of production managers, manufacturing engineers, technicians, and supply chain and manufacturing operations personnel. You (and by extension your team) will own success within the following disciplines:

• Procurement
• Inventory
• Quality
• Production
• Compliance with applicable regulations and industry standards, including safety, export control and NDAA compliance
• Inbound and Outbound Logistics
• Supplier selection, contracting, industrialization, and relationship management
• Insource vs outsource decisions
• Manufacturing and R&D facility Development and Operations

In addition, you will: 

• Manage complex, frequently conflicting priorities, helping the team balance performance targets, cost targets, reliability targets, production targets, and schedule risk
• Act as the primary interface with other key leaders within the company, helping unblock projects, manage conflicting priorities, and predict future bottlenecks
• Curate and maintain a small set of key metrics that track the performance of your team and report said metrics to the rest of the company in a way that inspires progress and, as required, course corrections
• Interact closely with operations, engineering, and executive leadership to help unblock projects, manage conflicting priorities, predict future bottlenecks, etc.
• Lead by example in promoting a positive and collaborative work culture
  
  

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of management experience in manufacturing complex hardware systems
  
  
• Experience successfully taking a complex hardware system from prototype through to low volume production ( >100x units/year with a product of similar complexity to our products)
  
  
• Past experience leading a manufacturing team in a fast paced NPI environment 
  
  
• Deep understanding of manufacturing systems and the ability to implement right-sized systems as companies grow
  
  
• Deep understanding of complex supply chain and past experience with international supply chain management and logistics 
  
  
• Deep understanding of supplier selection, management, contracting, and industrialization
  
  
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to deftly handle conflicting priorities and gain alignment across different departments