Lead Manufacturing Engineer, Space Vehicle Integration

span the entire vehicle integration value chain, including Design for Manufacturability, advanced manufacturing process development, tooling design & selection, supplier technical management, quality system implementation, and comprehensive work documentation. You will lead cross-functional initiatives, mentor junior engineers, and drive integration excellence across vehicle structures, mechanisms, harness installation, and final close-out.

The ideal candidate demonstrates proven leadership in solving complex technical challenges with innovative, practical solutions in fast-paced, resource-constrained environments. You have successfully scaled manufacturing processes from prototype through production and have a track record of delivering high-reliability hardware on aggressive timelines.

• ◆Own the vehicle-level build flow for both production vehicle lines: define assembly and integration sequence, station and zone content, takt, and the work instructions and travelers that execute it for each vehicle line.
• ◆Own the post-environmental close-out stations — weight and balance, mass properties verification, sealing, final mechanical close-out and ship preparation. These stations are the throughput bottleneck in every flow we have modeled; making them faster is the single highest-value thing this role does.
• ◆Develop and qualify vehicle integration processes: precision fastening and torque control, bonded and shimmed joints, mechanism and propulsion module installation, harness routing and installation, and alignment to metrology-defined datums.
• ◆Drive Design for Manufacturability and Assembly into vehicle-level designs before CDR — access, fastener reach, tool clearance, integration order, and testability of the assembled vehicle — partnering directly with structures, mechanisms and systems design engineers.
• ◆Act as a principal stakeholder in deploying Anduril's Manufacturing Development Process (MDP) on this program. The Manager and Senior Manager of Manufacturing Engineering are the full process owners; every manufacturing engineer is an owner and an evangelist. You will be expected to carry MDP into design forums rather than wait for it to be handed to you.
• ◆Mature manufacturing readiness artifacts concurrently with design readiness milestones — producibility assessments, process and tooling plans, build flow definition and manufacturing readiness evidence timed to PDR and CDR rather than assembled after them.
• ◆Adopt and master our manufacturing execution and product lifecycle toolchain — Foundry and Teamcenter — and use it as the system of record for build definition, work instruction authoring, as-built records and production data. Fluency here is a requirement of the role, not a training objective.
• ◆Specify and deploy mechanical ground support equipment and tooling: handling and lift fixtures, rotation and transport fixtures, integration stands, alignment tooling and torque tooling, including custom design in CAD.
• ◆Partner with Supply Chain and Quality to define, deploy and monitor manufacturing best practices at the vendors and outside partners who deliver finished vehicle assemblies into our production facility — workmanship and process requirements, first article and source inspection expectations, and the as-built and nonconformance records that must arrive with the hardware. Incoming assemblies that are not integration-ready stop this line, so this interface is yours to own, not to inherit.
• ◆Hire, mentor and lead the integration engineers who will each own a single vehicle line, while retaining cross-line ownership of integration process, tooling and workmanship standards; provide hands-on technical leadership to integration technicians on the floor.

• ✓Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Aerospace, Mechanical, Manufacturing or Industrial Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• ✓8+ years of manufacturing engineering experience in aerospace, space, defense or another high-reliability industry, including 4+ years on final assembly and integration of complete vehicles, spacecraft or comparably complex electromechanical systems.
• ✓Personally owned the build flow for at least one vehicle-level or major-assembly integration line — sequence definition, station content, work instructions and travelers — and can walk through how you built it and what you changed after first article.
• ✓Hands-on depth in mechanical integration: precision fastening and torque control, bonded or shimmed joints, mechanism installation, harness routing and installation, and alignment to metrology-defined datums (laser tracker, CMM or photogrammetry).
• ✓Experience with weight and balance or mass properties verification and final close-out operations on flight or comparably high-con