Director, Forward Deployed Engineering (Manufacturing)

Location: Los Angeles, CA, United States; on-site.

Salary: $300K–$415K annually, plus equity.

Company

hirify.global builds autonomous factories using AI, advanced software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing for aerospace, defense, and other mission-critical products.

What you will do

• Lead the technical arm of Customer Programs and own manufacturing scoping for new customer engagements.
• Represent hirify.global with customer engineering, program, and leadership teams through working sessions, recommendations, presentations, and written communication.
• Conduct customer discovery through site visits, process mapping, operational observation, and stakeholder interviews before defining solutions.
• Review requirements, drawings, specifications, tolerances, materials, and volumes to define manufacturable commitments.
• Build, manage, and develop a customer-facing forward deployed engineering team.
• Hand off clear product definitions, make-vs-buy decisions, process capability requirements, and manufacturing plans to Build Engineering while developing reusable scoping templates.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, Manufacturing, or a related engineering field plus 8+ years of manufacturing or manufacturing engineering experience, or 12+ years of that experience without a degree.
• 3+ years managing technical teams with direct reports.
• Experience in a customer-facing technical role, such as applications, field or sales engineering, program engineering, or consulting, including presenting technical recommendations to customer engineering and program leadership.
• Ability to lead a technical team in a customer-facing capacity and translate customer requirements into manufacturing reality.
• Experience running structured customer discovery and converting findings into defined technical solutions.
• Strong first-principles engineering judgment for evaluating complex requirements and constraints before proposing or committing to solutions.
• Fluency reading and interpreting engineering drawings, specifications, GD&T, and manufacturing process requirements.
• Experience scoping or defining manufacturing work, including DFM, make-vs-buy, process planning, tooling strategy, or production launch.
• Must be a U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, protected individual, or eligible to obtain the authorizations required under ITAR.

Nice to have

• Experience in aerospace, defense, maritime, or other high-complexity, high-mix manufacturing environments.
• Experience in both a scaling or startup environment and a mature manufacturing organization.
• Exposure to precision machining, castings, forgings, sheet metal, or additive processes across metals and composites.
• Experience working with sales, program management, or commercial teams on new customer engagements.
• Exposure to MES/ERP, CAM automation, robotics, or factory data systems, including feeding customer insights into product and automation roadmaps.
• Experience building repeatable systems and templates instead of solving each problem from scratch.

Culture & Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans.
• 401(k) and equity.
• Flexible vacation policy.
• Relocation support may be provided in certain situations based on business need.

Hiring process

• hirify.global may use AI-assisted recruiting tools, including an interview notetaker; candidates will be notified before recording and may opt out without impact on candidacy.
• Employment decisions and candidate evaluations are performed by humans.