Manager, Strategic Sourcing & Supplier Quality

Location: Torrance, California, United States

Salary: $170,500–$238,500 USD per year base salary, plus potential equity.

Company

Defense technology company designing and manufacturing high-performance unmanned systems and rebuilding the U.S. drone industrial base.

What you will do

• Build and lead the integrated strategic sourcing and supplier quality function across critical supply categories.
• Develop category strategies, long-term supply plans, and proactive supplier risk mitigation programs.
• Manage supplier relationships covering quality, delivery, compliance, cost, and strategic alignment.
• Lead supplier qualification, audits, corrective actions, scorecards, quality KPIs, and performance improvement initiatives.
• Hire, mentor, and develop supplier quality engineers while driving supplier accountability.
• Partner with Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Finance, and supply chain teams across air, ground, and electronics categories.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Supply Chain, Operations, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of experience in sourcing, procurement, supplier quality, supply chain, manufacturing operations, or a related function.
• Experience leading supplier management, strategic sourcing, contract management, negotiations, and category strategy development.
• Hands-on experience with supplier qualification, audits, corrective actions, root-cause analysis, scorecards, and quality KPI ownership.
• Experience building or leading supplier quality engineering teams and managing manufactured components, assemblies, inspection protocols, and acceptance criteria.
• Ability to drive supply continuity, dual-sourcing, cost reduction, quality improvement, and risk mitigation in a fast-paced production environment.

Nice to have

• Experience in aerospace, defense, robotics, drones, electronics, automotive, hardware, or other high-reliability manufacturing environments.
• Experience with PCBA, mechanical, electromechanical, RF, airframe, propulsion, or ground systems suppliers.
• Experience scaling sourcing or supplier quality processes in a startup or high-growth manufacturing company.
• Familiarity with ASL, first article inspection, APQP/PPAP-style methods, ISO/AS9100 environments, or Lean Six Sigma.
• Experience managing international suppliers, including APAC-based sourcing or supplier quality activities.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-paced, hands-on environment focused on moving defense capabilities from design to deployment.
• High ownership and practical decision-making across cost, schedule, quality, and risk.
• Competitive equity grants as part of the total compensation package.
• Equal opportunity employment.