Sr. Manager of Composites Technology

Maxar Space is currently seeking a motivated and skilled Sr. Manager of Composites Technology to join our team on site in Mountain View, Ca. In this role, you will lead a department of skilled composite manufacturing engineers and production technicians and their managers, who produce a wide variety of composite components, structures, and assemblies for all our spacecraft projects. This department also includes the metal machine shop and paint lab in addition to composites groups.

The Sr. Manager of Composites Technology will oversee these following sections, each with a section manager that will report to the Sr. Manager: Composite Manufacturing Engineers, Composite Production, Composite machine shop, and Metal machine shop & paint lab.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Develop Strategic and operational plans for all composite manufacturing activities within the department, to produce and deliver components and assemblies within schedule needs, compliant to cost targets, and meeting quality requirements.
• Provide oversight of the metal machine shop and paint lab to ensure the managers of these areas, which will report to the department manager, have the support needed to provide the parts and services that all Mfg areas within Maxar rely on for their flight and non-flight hardware.
• Integrate financial management into your day-to-day operating system; support your managers to increase their financial acumen; work as a team to execute on all financial objectives. Support the monthly financial cycle by determining processes for cost management, creating and building tools that define labor forecasts with calendarization, and are tied to the group’s deliverables.
• Define objectives that facilitate skill development and cross-training for skill depth and breadth, with the goal of building a high performing, flexible, and diverse teams in composites and metal/paint lab.
• Ensure that section managers have the capability, drive, and tools needed to define accurate local staffing plans for their areas which meet the needs of all projects and correlate well with budget constraints.
• Support proposal efforts. Must be able to support and contribute to the creation and review of cost bids for proposals, using accurate and detailed cost models while noting areas with potential cost/schedule/technical risks.
• Will be required to ensure indirect spending and capital plans are in line with annual budget and accurately forecast critical needs in these areas.
• Work with purchasing and planning departments for raw material purchases; oversee equipment maintenance plans to ensure equipment is kept in good working order; ensure all facility resources support the needs of flight hardware production.
• Define and drive handoffs between other engineering teams and composite production, for all subsystems and product lines, to ensure on time delivery of flight parts to respective product lines or next assys. Demonstrate the ability to communicate with and influence persons outside of the group to remove roadblocks and advocate for the department needs for successful execution of each program.
• Identify initiatives, Internal Research and Development projects, etc. which will enhance Maxar’s ability to win new awards (higher performance, lower cost, technological advantage, etc.).  Push for implementation and provide continuing support for those projects that are underway. Uncover opportunities in current product life cycle, make specific recommendations and drive changes for improvements in products we can offer our customers to make MAXAR more competitive.

Additional Functions

• Collaboration with Materials and Processes group to maintain awareness of composite materials industry trends and technology development, with an eye for use of new technologies and materials Maxar projects.

Minimum requirements:

• Must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident
• BS degree in Aerospace, Mechanical Engineering; Industrial, Manufacturing; or equivalent. Four years of additional experience may be substituted for a degree.
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in aerospace/aircraft industry with technical expertise in the production and manufacturing of parts or assemblies. A master's degree will account for two years of experience.
• Knowledge of structure components or assemblies, metal or composite component fabrication, tooling/fixturing, instrumentation, data acquisition, mechanical testing.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Technical expe