Lead Avionics Manufacturing Engineer

The role

The Lead Avionics Manufacturing Engineer will lead the manufacturing engineering team responsible for avionics production processes. This role owns the manufacturing engineering strategy from SMT assembly through final box build.

What you will do

• Lead the manufacturing engineering team responsible for avionics production.
• Develop and maintain avionics manufacturing standards, processes, design guidelines, and best practices.
• Own the development, qualification, and continuous improvement of manufacturing processes.
• Establish process controls, acceptance criteria, workmanship standards, and manufacturing documentation.
• Lead the selection, implementation, qualification, and improvement of avionics manufacturing equipment and tooling.
• Partner with design engineering to improve manufacturability, testability, reliability, and production scalability.
• Drive new product introduction from engineering prototypes into controlled production processes.
• Identify production risks and recurring manufacturing issues and drive them to root cause and corrective action.
• Define and track key manufacturing metrics such as yield, defect rates, rework, cycle time, and process capability.
• Develop process validation and qualification strategies for new equipment, materials, and manufacturing methods.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of experience in electronics or avionics manufacturing engineering.
• Basic understanding of SMT manufacturing processes, including stencil printing, pick-and-place, reflow, inspection, and process troubleshooting.
• Experience developing and improving manufacturing processes for PCBAs and electronic assemblies.
• Experience supporting products through multiple stages of manufacturing, from PCBA fabrication through integration into higher-level assemblies.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex manufacturing problems from initial investigation through implementation of corrective actions.
• Experience creating manufacturing documentation, process specifications, work instructions, and production controls.
• Ability to work directly with engineering and production teams in a fast-paced hardware development and manufacturing environment.

Nice to have

• Experience leading manufacturing engineers or owning a significant electronics manufacturing area.
• Experience with aerospace, defense, automotive, medical device, or other high-reliability electronics manufacturing.
• Strong knowledge of IPC workmanship and electronics manufacturing standards.
• Experience with automated optical inspection, X-ray inspection, rework, cleaning, conformal coating, or other PCBA manufacturing processes.
• Experience developing board-level acceptance test processes and production test equipment.
• Experience with environmental screening processes such as thermal cycling.
• Experience with electromechanical assembly and avionics box build.
• Experience implementing manufacturing processes within an MES and developing production traceability systems.
• Experience with PFMEAs, control plans, statistical process control, process capability, and structured root-cause methodologies.
• Familiarity with AS9100 or similar aerospace quality management systems.

About the company

Northwood is a modern space infrastructure company building a global network of phased array and parabolic ground stations. They design, build, and rapidly deploy scalable systems for satellite missions.