Manager, Supplier Development Engineering (Starlink)

MANAGER, STARLINK SUPPLIER DEVELOPMENT ENGINEERING

The Starlink User Terminal business is experiencing exponential growth across consumer, retail, and other applications, and therefore demands a resilient supply chain. As part of ensuring resilience in the supply chain setup for this product portfolio, the role requires a candidate with proven leadership to spearhead the selection of suppliers, a demonstrated ability to convince cross-functional teams of the benefits of proposed supply bases/chains, and the capacity to scale suppliers to production using industry-leading practices while pushing the frontiers in this area year over year. We are actively looking for candidates who possess comprehensive knowledge of manufacturing and quality tools, prior leadership experience, and unrelenting motivation to enable suppliers for success. This position requires a combination of proven leadership and technical capabilities.

The Manager, Starlink Supplier Development Engineering within the Starlink Product Supply Chain Organization at SpaceX is responsible for defining and implementing policies and strategies for near- and mid-term results. This hire will make strategic decisions that impact the department and have broad influence across organizations within SpaceX. Success in this role requires the use of strong communication skills, engineering intuition and best practices, and commodity management experience to systematically grow and mature SpaceX suppliers into strategic partners.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage the Starlink team of Supplier Development Engineers, whose scope spans mechanical, electromechanical, and consumable components, as needed to deliver the stack of parts from the supply base for the components in the User Terminal bill of materials.
• Actively and effectively manage the team by providing clear direction that aligns with the strategy and priorities of the company.
• Hire, develop, and retain top talent to meet current and future business needs. Actively manage poor performance as appropriate.
• Act as a champion for the team through regular communications with company leadership.
• Host best practice and knowledge-sharing sessions across cross-functional teams.
• Assess supplier capabilities, technologies, and their ability to successfully execute manufacturing requirements. Manage Production Part Approval Process (PPAP), rate, and reliability campaigns to enable serial production.
• Ensure execution of appropriate qualification plans, such as the use of corner case assessments, stress tests, etc., to avoid regression in performance in mass production.
• Ensure a standardized qualification approach across suppliers by developing equipment buy-off checklists, site acceptance tests (SAT), factory acceptance tests (FAT), and standardized qualification protocols.
• Establish relationship with leadership with suppliers to manage escalation and execution.
• Manage supplier improvement programs, and drive improvements utilizing Lean methodologies, supplier scorecards, and supplier audits.
• Ensure supplier compliance while driving systematic problem-solving and process improvement plans to deliver value.
• Provide program leadership necessary to ensure that product quality, delivery, and cost achieve business and customer expectations.
• Interface with responsible engineering and production teams to define production roadmaps aligned with Starlink goals.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline
• 3+ years in a quality, reliability, supply chain, or engineering role
• 1+ years in a formal management capacity with direct reports

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCES:

• Expert level knowledge in one or more commodities within the team’s scope such as silicon manufacturing, PCB/PCBA manufacturing, scaling contract manufacturing, specific process expertise on ultrasonic welding, and/or harnessing
• Technical capabilities including knowledge of 2D blueprints and model drawings
• Knowledge of supplier quality processes (Production Part Approval Process, Advanced Product Quality Planning, First Article Inspection Reports, etc.)
• Experience with quality systems (ISO 9000/TS/AS9100)
• Disciplined approach to problem solving - 8D
• Proficient in Keynote, Numbers, MS Office applications and report writing
• Knowledge of Lean concepts
• Experience with sharing information and influencing others (strong written and verbal communication skills, able to liaise cross functionally, internally and externally, and make presentations to team members and management)
• Knowledge of statistical techniques and methods (Minitab, design of experiments, Six Sigma, etc.)
• Pareto analysis, root cause and corrective action experience. Experience performing PFMEAs
• Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) experience
• Ability to distil complex information into simple one-pagers

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Position requires long hours and some nights and weekends 
• Ability to travel up to 60-75% during the work week