Senior Manufacturing Design Engineer

Hayward · USD 145,000-219,000 / year · Full-time · Onsite · Posted Oct 1, 2026

At a glance

The Senior Manufacturing Design Engineer is responsible for developing, validating, and scaling the manufacturing processes used to build advanced unmanned aircraft systems.
This role bridges product development and production, ensuring new drone designs can be manufactured safely, reliably, and at the required cost, quality, and production rate.

Lead manufacturing activities for new drone products and major design changes from prototype through production launch.
Develop manufacturing plans, process flows, workstation layouts, tooling strategies, and production-readiness requirements.
Participate in design reviews and provide actionable design-for-manufacturing, assembly, test, automation, and serviceability feedback.
Develop and validate manufacturing processes for mechanical assembly, electronics integration, adhesive bonding, fastening, soldering, calibration, software loading, functional testing, and final product acceptance.
Create process specifications, work instructions, standard work, control plans, inspection requirements, and manufacturing bills of material.
Conduct process capability studies, gauge repeatability and reproducibility studies, and equipment qualification.
Perform time studies, line balancing, capacity modeling, and bottleneck analysis.
Lead root-cause investigations for manufacturing defects, test failures, yield losses, and reliability issues.
Partner with design teams on airframes, propulsion systems, avionics, cameras, sensors, batteries, gimbals, payloads, and communications hardware.
Train technicians, production leads, and operators on new processes, equipment, and work instructions.

Bachelor’s degree in Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, or a related technical field.
Three or more years of experience in manufacturing engineering, process development, new product introduction, or production engineering.
Experience transitioning complex electromechanical products from development into production.
Working knowledge of design for manufacturing and assembly, process validation, production tooling, and manufacturing documentation.
Experience with structured problem-solving, root-cause analysis, and corrective-action methods.
Ability to interpret engineering drawings, specifications, bills of material, and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing.
Experience analyzing manufacturing data and using it to improve yield, cycle time, cost, or process capability.
Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment with evolving products and production requirements.
Willingness to work directly on the manufacturing floor and support time-sensitive production builds.

Experience manufacturing drones, aerospace products, robotics, autonomous systems, consumer electronics, or other complex electromechanical assemblies.
Knowledge of aerospace quality systems, including AS9100, first-article inspection, configuration management, and production traceability.
Experience with printed circuit board assemblies, cameras, optical systems, gimbals, inertial sensors, electric motors, batteries, composite structures, or precision mechanical assemblies.
Experience developing adhesive-bonding, torque-controlled fastening, soldering, calibration, or environmentally controlled processes.
Familiarity with production databases, manufacturing execution systems, enterprise resource planning systems, and product lifecycle management tools.
Experience with CAD, tolerance analysis, statistical analysis, and manufacturing simulation tools.
Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, or Design for Six Sigma training.
Experience specifying, purchasing, commissioning, or validating automated manufacturing equipment.