Technical lead, Manufacturing & Integration; engineering operations

The Technical Manufacturing Manager leads a small team of engineering technicians responsible for building, integrating, testing, and troubleshooting low-volume, high-mix scientific hardware. This person is accountable for the technical quality and functional performance of manufacturing output, the capability and development of the technician team, and the successful transfer of new and custom systems from development into controlled execution.

The successful candidate will bring a strong experimental-physics foundation and substantial hands-on experience with lasers, spectroscopy, ultrahigh vacuum, precision optical systems, or comparable physics-based hardware. They must understand why the product works - not only how it is assembled - and use that understanding to evaluate requirements, identify technical risk, interpret test results, and lead effective troubleshooting.

Role distinction:
This is not primarily a production planning, scheduling, or material-control position. In partnership with Production Management, Manufacturing Engineering, Design Engineering, Systems Engineering, and Quality, this role owns the technical execution and quality of what the technician team builds.

• Directly manage a small team of manufacturing technicians performing assembly, integration, alignment, test, inspection, rework, and troubleshooting activities.

• Set clear expectations for workmanship, technical rigor, documentation, safety, ownership, and professional conduct; review work and reinforce those standards consistently.

• Develop technician capability through structured training, qualification, coaching, and increasingly complex assignments.

• Evaluate individual and team performance, provide timely feedback, and build development plans aligned with both employee growth and organizational need.

• Maintain technical oversight of active builds and ensure that released requirements, drawings, work instructions, test procedures, and acceptance criteria are understood and executed correctly.

• Assess whether build and test results demonstrate the intended product behavior, not merely completion of documented steps.

• Provide or coordinate technical acceptance within established design-authority, configuration-control, and quality processes; stop or elevate work when requirements or results are unclear.

• Differentiate among workmanship defects, process variation, test-system problems, component failures, and underlying design limitations, and direct the appropriate response.

• Provide hands‑on technical leadership during system assembly, optical alignment, integration, calibration, verification, and failure investigation.

• Use physics-based reasoning, data analysis, and structured root‑cause methods to resolve problems spanning optics, lasers, electronics, vacuum, mechanics, controls, and software interfaces.

• Guide technicians through disciplined troubleshooting rather than relying on trial‑and‑error adjustment or undocumented expert knowledge.

• Partner with responsible engineers to disposition nonconformances, define corrective actions, and determine when design or process changes are required.

• Represent manufacturing early in requirements definition, design reviews, verification planning, and transition‑readiness decisions.

• Evaluate whether requirements are measurable, designs are buildable and serviceable, alignment and calibration approaches are repeatable, and verification methods reflect the intended physical performance.

• Identify configuration‑specific risks in low‑volume or custom builds and ensure they are resolved or explicitly accepted before execution.

• Work with Design Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering to convert development knowledge into controlled build records, tooling, training, and test methods, and feed manufacturing results back into product and process improvement.

• Partner with Production Management on priorities and delivery commitments by providing credible estimates of technical…