Manufacturing Engineer

Every ACME team member is expected to demonstrate our four core values in their daily work:

• Dedicated — Get the job done attitude Hungry for achievement Act with urgency
• Supportive — Every stakeholder matters Trust through integrity Say YES! Let's win together

ACME Industries MFG, Inc. is a 75+ year precision CNC contract manufacturer headquartered in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Operating from two facilities on Pratt Boulevard and Chase Avenue, ACME specializes in the machining of large, complex castings and forgings for customers in aerospace, defense, power generation, rail, and industrial markets.

ACME's core competency is manufacturing solutions for complex parts in critical applications — components where dimensional accuracy, material integrity, and repeatable process control directly affect mission outcomes. Our customers depend on ACME for low-volume, high-mix production of mission-critical hardware that other shops cannot or will not attempt.

The parts ACME machines are not commodity work. Typical jobs involve raw aluminum, titanium, steel, Inconel, or ductile iron castings and forgings weighing tens to hundreds of pounds — parts that require careful material entry strategies, massive fixturing, and precise probing sequences before a single cutting tool engages. Characteristics of ACME's product mix include:

• Large bores, deep pockets, and complex multi-axis contours on parts that will not fit on a standard machining center
• Tight geometric tolerances (true position, concentricity, flatness) in materials prone to movement and hard spots
• Long cycle times — many jobs run 4 to 20+ hours per operation across turning, milling, boring, and finishing
• First-article and production runs supporting active aerospace / defense programs where traceability, AS9100 documentation, and ITAR compliance are non-negotiable
• Horizontal boring mill (HBM) and vertical turret lathe (VTL) work for the largest components at the Chase facility

ACME's equipment fleet includes Haas VMCs, Mazak turning centers, Mori Seiki machining centers, Okuma lathes, Doosan lathes, VTLs, HBMs, and FANUC-controlled multi-axis platforms. By April 2027, four additional machine tools and a dedicated CMM lab will expand ACME's production capacity as we execute a production plan scaling from 250 to over 1,500 units across key product lines over the next three years.

Production is doubling. New machine tools are arriving. Key senior engineers are retiring, taking with them decades of institutional process knowledge. ACME is hiring Manufacturing Engineers — not just programmers, not just estimators, not CI specialists — engineers who cut chips, own processes, and build ACME's capability from the inside out.

The Manufacturing Engineer is the technical backbone of ACME's production operation. This is a hands‑on, floor‑present role that bridges the Engineering department and the machine shop — from the first customer RFQ through NPI, first article, production launch, and ongoing continuous improvement. The Manufacturing Engineer owns the manufacturing process: how parts are held, how material is removed, how sequences are built, and how each operation is documented so that quality and repeatability can be achieved on every run.

ACME does not have a mentor structure to ramp up junior engineers. This role requires someone who arrives independently capable — a machinist‑turned‑engineer or a degreed engineer who has cut chips — and who can immediately take ownership of active work while building new capability alongside the team.

ACME's manufacturing process for complex castings and forgings…