Sr. Manager / Manager, Responsible Engineering (A&D)

Divergent is a technology company that has architected, invented, built, and commercialized an end-to-end factory system called the Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS™) that comprehensively uses machine learning to optimally engineer, additively manufacture, and flexibly assemble complex integrated vehicle structures and subsystems. Products created using DAPS are superior in performance, lower in cost, rapidly customizable to meet mission and customer-specific requirements, faster to market, and scalable on demand to high volume production. Divergent is a qualified Tier 1 supplier to global automotive OEMs, and Divergent is now expanding to support mission critical needs in the Aerospace and Defense sector. Join us to be a part of this transformative journey, where your impact will shape the future of technology and production. 

Purpose

Divergent is seeking experienced and motivated leaders to support the next generation of world-leading vehicle design and advanced manufacturing. This role will oversee an engineering team of 5+ held accountable to delivering complete products. You’ll be expected to grow this team over time to support the industry vertical your team is accountable for.  

A Manager, Responsible Engineering A&D will build and mentor a team of engineers to build cutting edge vehicles and products. This position requires: Hands on mentorship and team building to foster accountability and ownership at the product level, and capability to give deep technical guidance for the growing team. Collaborating successfully with peer leaders to realize positive outcomes across teams.  Accountability to the executive team to set and deliver outcomes for the business.  

The Role

• Set team priorities, track projects, and mentor engineers to achieve critical company milestones. 
• Develop and institutionalize a culture of accountability, extreme ownership, collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence.  
• Perform cross-functional technical review to ensure product capabilities meet requirements. 
• Identify and communicate capability gaps, risks, and dependencies between application and platform teams, and coordinate mitigation plans. 
• Growing the capabilities of the team, through training, mentorship, documentation and hiring  
• Appropriate resource allocation, measuring capacity of the team against capacity  
• Accountable for generating and measuring functional departmental goals, KPIs and responsibilities.  

Basic Qualifications

• Ability to lawfully access information and technology that is subject to US export controls 
• Bachelor’s degree in, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent technical discipline. 
• Minimum 8 years of experience in a relevant technical discipline. 
• Minimum 3 years of experience in technical leadership. 
• Demonstrated ability to lead team of mechanical engineers working cross functionally to deliver successful products  
• Proven track record of leading complex projects from concept through production, focusing on high-performance materials and high-reliability applications. 
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to synthesize complex, inputs to simple terms and find alignment across multifunctional stake holders. 
• Strong systems-thinking mindset—comfortable navigating ambiguity and driving structured clarity across technology and program boundaries. 

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated excellence developing products and systems for aerospace and defense applications. 
• Experience with additive manufacturing, automation systems, or materials development. 
• Demonstrated ability to thrive in a high-tech, fast-paced startup environment with a passion for disrupting traditional manufacturing paradigms. 

Work Environment

• Requires frequent standing, walking, and interaction across production and R&D work areas. 
• Requires frequent standing, walking, bending, reaching. May involve crouching, climbing, confined spaces, or work at heights. 
• May occasionally require exten