Manager, Production

Company Overview:  

At Relativity Space, we have two audacious goals: to build the next great commercial launch company with Terran R and to become America's leading force in additive manufacturing innovation. Both contribute to our long-term vision of creating humanity’s industrial base on Mars, paving the way for interplanetary life to expand the possibilities of the human experience. This journey begins right here on Earth – where we design, build, and fly rockets to deliver customer payloads to orbit. Terran R, our medium-to-heavy lift reusable rocket, fulfills the growing demand for launch capacity, thanks to our iterative approach that accelerates design, testing, and development while minimizing costs. While our groundbreaking research and development in 3D printing pushes the boundaries of large-scale additive manufacturing.

Your journey with us is more than just a job – it’s an opportunity to shape the future of aerospace technology, additive manufacturing, and the human experience alongside a community of passionate, creative individuals. Join us on this extraordinary journey, as we work together to transform our vision into reality.

About the Team:  

The Vehicle Production team at Relativity Space is responsible for taking the rocket from raw stock to ship-ready stages. The team’s scope includes the full vehicle value chain: barrel fabrication (routing, roll forming, machining, friction-stir-welding), structures assembly, and integration. In addition, various subassembly and support functions, such as tube shop, mechanisms, TPS, and development fabrication shop roll under Vehicle Production. Overall, this team is critical to the development, initial build & test iteration, and production builds of Terran-R. This team pulls together the efforts of supply chain, tooling, and vehicle manufacturing & engineering to deliver test-ready stages to Launch. To meet our goals, we will drive the product from build to ATP to delivery to the Launch team, ensuring the team can move fast while still producing high quality, well understood products.

About the Role: 

As a Production Manager on the Vehicle Production team, you will be accountable for a key lane (or lanes) of the vehicle manufacturing value stream—barrel fabrication, structures assembly, integration, mechanisms, subassemblies, TPS, paint booth, tube shop, development fabrication shop, or precision laser scanning. You will have purview over production and operations teams. A high degree of proactivity, technical & operational versatility, and people skills are required to be successful in this role. You will be expected to oscillate between big picture strategy and tactical operations on a whim. Key responsibilities will include:

• Accountable for leading and managing a diversely skilled production organization across 2 shifts to build Terran-R.
• Manage and drive hardware builds. This will involve reviewing work instructions, executing to WO’s, identifying and removing operational roadblocks, and doing everything within your power to guarantee achievement of on-time delivery, cost, and quality targets. 
• Ensure a culture of safety, quality, and excellence is communicated and upheld.
• Drive quality metrics to continuously improve product output of the manufacturing team.
• Partner with Specialist team to identify & track key technician trainings to ensure all skillsets are met prior to beginning operations.
• Defining the strategy to transition team from low-volume development environment to high-volume production environment on short time-frame; responsible for communicating a clear, actionable plan to set team up for success. This may involve:
• Tracking labor hours to identify bottlenecks in key processes.
• Conducting capacity analyses to justify additional personnel or equipment.
• Standing up a scalable Production program. Building the necessary tools, schedules, reports, and reviews to ensure a data-backed story on Terran-R’s hardware health is presented and understood by the cross-disciplinary team and leadership.
• Spearhead initiatives to support more effective and efficient vehicle hardware builds.
• Develop strong working relationships with Supply Chain, Materials Management, Quality, and Vehicle Manufacturing. 
• Developing and mentoring production staff to meet team and company goals.  

About You:  

• Bachelor of Science degree in manufacturing engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering & operations, or equivalent (direct work experience as a Production Manager).
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in an operations-focused role within a high-mix environment.
• Minimum of 6 years of experience formally leading or managing a Production team. Minimum of 4 years of experience formally leading leaders.
• Minimum of 6 years of hands-on experience building hardware in a manufacturing environment.
• Extensive experience developing scalable business processes.
• Extensive experience developing operations and production tools to optimize builds.
• Direct experience standing up visual management cues in a production environment.
• Highly collaborative, strong communication skills, and ability to navigate diverse backgrounds (engineering, technician, executive, etc.)
• Relentless pursuit of production excellence—safety, quality, and schedule at forefront.
• Comfortable with constructive conflict and difficult conversations, so long as it moves the business forward.
• High degree of self-awareness and self-starting abilities; able to influence others in and outside of your organization.
• Expert experience in PLM, ERP, and MES systems.
• Direct experience in NPI-to-Production environments.
• Highly organized and able to provide structure & definition.

Nice to haves but not required:  

• Mastery of Smartsheet, SQL, and Excel
• Extensive Production scaling experience (i.e., hiring 10’s to 100’s over short time-frames)

Relativity Space offers competitive salary and equity, a generous vacation policy, an annual L&D stipend and more! 

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.