Director, Production Support Operations

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.

DIRECTOR, PRODUCTION SUPPORT OPERATIONS

The Production Support Director has a diverse scope that is critical to ensuring smooth and efficient plant operations. Main areas of responsibility are focused on all the enabling and supporting processes including; Critical Lift operations, Production and Facility Maintenance which includes Fluid systems and Automation and Control teams, Production Tooling and Vehicle Fleet Management and Maintenance.

Leading teams with vertically integrated supporting staff, the Director will be responsible for managing all asset performance and reliability risks that could adversely affect factory or business operations. As production develops and increases rate the team's goals are to achieve maximum asset and system up-time by implementing and executing plans to ensure the facility and services are always in peak condition, and to ensure Critical lift team services the site operations efficiently and minimizes production losses as well as optimize fleet effectivity.

RESPONSIBILITIES: 

• Lead the diverse supporting teams, and ensure that projects are designed and analyzed to maintain and improve safety, increase production rate, reduce critical path machine downtime, and promote long-term reliability.
• Maintain company leading spare parts management system, including but not limited to, asset-level demand signals, sourcing process optimization/execution, and warehousing methodology.
• Ensure that employees have the training, tools and materials they need to safely carry out their duties. Work with EH&S and Supply Chain to ensure all internal resources follow SpaceX best practices.
• Collaborate with design teams and provide feedback pertaining to Equipment design for manufacturing, with fit for purpose solutions that ensure new tooling and production equipment is user friendly, with high reliability and sustainability, including all Mech, Electrical, fluid systems and automations and control systems.
• Work with Engineering partners to improve quality and efficiency of all critical lift operations
• Initiate data-driven asset decisions that reduce production overhead and increase reliability through IoT-device campaigns, conditionally triggered machine events, and optimization of preventative planning for all supporting equipment, including Production equipment, CLT equipment, Fleet equipment and fluid/gas facilities.
• Motivate team members to take ownership of their projects, and promote collaboration between team members.
• Perform and execute in-depth reliability study driven improvement campaigns on the company’s greatest production asset risks.
• Implement and maintain detailed asset onboarding workflow for both vendor-purchased and internally designed controlled equipment; own record creation and active management system for all SpaceX controlled equipment.
• Develop and submit budget with ROI for proposed asset upgrade projects.
• Collaborate with business partners to drive change where necessary to improve asset reliability and operational efficiency.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering field or at least 8+ years of experience in a production/military/automotive environment.
• 5+ years of experience in a manufacturing/engineering leadership role.
• 2+ years of experience in a managerial role overseeing both direct and indirect reports.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Proven track record of building, motivating, mentoring, and coaching high performance manufacturing teams.
• Technical project management experience.
• Excellent technical expertise and judgement across multiple engineering disciplines permitting peer-level review of your team’s work product.
• Creative problem solver that can bring multiple disciplines together.
• Ability to assess risk and make development decisions without all available data.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with direct experience negotiating integrated system trades between various stakeholders.
• Experience working with cross-functional teams and external customers or vendors.
• Highly detail oriented and passionate about advancing the commercial space industry.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, autonomously driven, and demanding start-up atmosphere.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Ability to work in outdoor environments as needed.
• Must be willing to work extended hours