Manager, Operations Engineering (Starship)

MANAGER, OPERATIONS ENGINEERING (STARSHIP)

Serve as operations engineering manager responsible for coordinating operations, conducting strategic planning, aligning resources to priorities, assessing progress towards targets, and optimizing operations for Starship and Super Heavy Booster. You will lead a team of highly-skilled engineers and data analysts who proactively identify and address operational challenges, implement industrial engineering practices, derive actionable information from data, and synchronize work priorities across SpaceX production and launch operations. Scope includes managing internal department priorities and resources, and synchronizing efforts with testing, supply chain, and other SpaceX elements to ensure starship and super heavy output matches launch manifest.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage a team of operations engineers, industrial engineers, and data analysts to focus them on the company’s most critical problems. Manage their development and career progression to become SpaceX people-leaders.
• Align people, processes, products, parts, and physical plant to meet ambitious targets for safety, quality, output, and efficiency. 
• Conduct operations engineering at a strategic level by optimizing resources, schedules, and risk under uncertainty across SpaceX production and launch.
• Analyze complex problems involving multiple stakeholders, driving towards optimal solutions in an uncertain and ambiguous future landscape. 
• Manage the development of advanced tools to analyze delivery, capacity, costs vs benefits, supply chain, and operations to guide executive decisions in anticipation of change.
• Leverage operational data to identify trends, propose leading indicators, and provide predictive information to steer executive decisions.
• Lead inter-disciplinary and cross-functional teams to develop and manage production strategy, mitigate future risks, and seize emerging opportunities.
• Identify operational challenges within the organization, lead problem formulation, determine root cause, and implement creative and effective solutions.
• Develop key performance measures, and identify decision points and actions to optimize production to meet demand, ensuring measured parameters correlate with overall company objectives.
• Collaborate with cross-departmental partners in supply chain, engineering, operations, and finance groups to synchronize efforts.
• Capture best practices of production systems and manage organizational knowledge and lessons-learned.
• Manage production workforce development efforts to ensure technicians and engineers are trained, qualified, and incentivized to perform their assigned roles. 

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline.
• 5+ years of professional experience in a manufacturing, military, aerospace and/or automotive environment.
• Experience leading a team of engineers/technicians.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Experience or education in management science and engineering, operations engineering, operations research, or industrial engineering.
• Experience with data-based decision making, modeling of complex systems, and framing executive decisions supported by engineering analysis.
• Ability to work in fast-paced, high stress environments.
• Excellent written and executive communication skills.
• Proficiency with statistics, data analysis, cost/benefit analysis, and visualization.
• Experience with data visualization tools, discrete event modeling tools, data queries and analysis.
• Experience leading in a developmental manufacturing environment, in aerospace production, or in a dynamic multi-dimensional industry.
• Ability to work autonomously, prioritize work, and make resource allocation recommendations that involve risk and uncertainty.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Must be able to work extended hours and/or weekends as needed, including occasional short-notice domestic travel.