Senior Industrial Engineer

Overview

Draper is an independent, nonprofit research and development company headquartered in Cambridge, MA. The 2,000+ employees of Draper tackle important national challenges with a promise of delivering successful and usable solutions. From military defense and space exploration to biomedical engineering, lives often depend on the solutions we provide. Our multidisciplinary teams of engineers and scientists work in a collaborative environment that inspires the cross-fertilization of ideas necessary for true innovation.

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We are seeking a mid‑career Industrial Engineer to support and evolve production operations. This role applies Industrial Engineering principles, modern analytics tools, and cross‑functional collaboration to reduce waste, improve efficiency, and guide manufacturing decisions for complex systems. You will analyze data systems to identify issues and drive continuous improvement solutions, develop tools and solutions that support production scheduling, cost optimization and production performance.

This role requires mentoring less experienced Industrial Engineers (without direct leadership authority) and will collaborate with production operations to understand manufacturing processes and provide data‑driven recommendations. The ideal candidate will demonstrate holistic ownership in solving operational challenges with creative solutions in a fast‑paced, resource‑limited environment. This individual will be flexible in providing support as needed to ensure products are built and shipped to stringent quality standards.

If you thrive as a connector among operational stakeholders to advance a production team, love solving complex problems, mentoring others, and introducing technology to effect change, this is the role for you.

• Support Manufacturing Engineers with standards development and performance analysis.
• Build discrete‑event simulations to analyze future production strategies, identify constraints, and optimize workflows.
• Partner with facilities engineering to plan new production lines and factory layouts.
• Produce and maintain capacity models and production ramp plans to define labor planning, capex requirements, workstation design, and throughput gaps.
• Design effective facility layouts and production lines using CAD and simulation which meet process requirements, enable production targets, optimize resource allocation and material flow, and maximize productivity and quality.
• Identify and champion improvements to key causes of high variability or production bottlenecks, driving actions to resolution across disciplines and stakeholders.
• Lead the design of production lines and workstations for both low‑rate and full‑rate production using techniques like Value Stream Mapping and Line Balancing.

• 3‑5 years Industrial Engineering experience in a production or manufacturing environment.
• Experience with Standard Time Data analysis (or strong understanding).
• Practical project management experience.
• Background with MS Project, Visual Basic, or similar engineering tools.
• Experience developing, monitoring, or reporting cost and schedule performance metrics.
• Ability to work in a fast‑paced environment, with ability to adapt to changing priorities and work effectively in a dynamic environment.
• Ability to collaborate and communicate effectively and openly with multi‑disciplinary program team members, program leadership, and non‑technical personnel.
• Prior work designing and/or setting up new production lines or factories, from process mapping through to collaborating with infrastructure design partners and detailed work station design.
• Experience launching or scaling new production lines or factories.
• Leadership experience, including team guidance or conflict resolution.
• Experience developing and executing production ramp‑up plans.
• Experience in production operations and new product integration.
• Advanced MS Excel.

• Requires a Bachelor’s degree or higher in industrial engineering or a related field (or equivalent experience).

• Applicants selected for this position…