Director of Manufacturing Strategy Santa Clara, CA or Remote

Thanks for your interest in Oklo! We are searching for a Director of Manufacturing Strategy to join our team.

Position Description

The Director of Manufacturing Strategy will define and continuously refine how Oklo converts ambitious product and deployment plans into an executable manufacturing system. Reporting to the Head of Supply Chain, this leader will integrate engineering judgment, supplier-market intelligence, commercial inputs, and strategic analysis to help Oklo achieve aggressive lead-time, cost, quality, and scalability goals.

During Oklo's first-of-a-kind (FOAK) build, the Director will work directly with Responsible Engineers and suppliers to develop and improve component-level manufacturing strategies, resolve industrialization challenges, and assess whether supplier processes can produce conforming hardware at the required rate. The role will translate these findings into company-wide make-vs-buy recommendations and manufacturing roadmaps.

This is a hybrid technical and commercial strategy role. It requires enough manufacturing depth to evaluate processes, tooling, qualification needs, quality controls, production constraints, and recovery plans, as well as enough commercial fluency to compare market options and support scenario modeling. The role partners closely with Engineering, Procurement, Strategy, Quality, Program Management, and Oklo's internal fabrication leadership.
This role develops the strategy for how Oklo will manufacture at scale; it does not establish, manage, or operate factories. When Oklo elects to make a product internally, execution transitions to the internal fabrication organization. Procurement retains ownership of supplier commercial strategy, sourcing, negotiations, and contracting.

Specific responsibilities may include:

• Own Oklo's enterprise manufacturing strategy, connecting product and deployment plans to executable manufacturing pathways across external suppliers and internal fabrication.
• Lead cross-functional make-vs-buy analyses and recommendations using technical feasibility, supplier capability and capacity, lead time, cost, quality, schedule risk, capital requirements, intellectual property, and long-term scalability.
• Build decision frameworks and provide supply-market intelligence to the Strategy team so alternative manufacturing scenarios can be modeled with credible assumptions and sensitivities.
• Partner with Responsible Engineers during FOAK execution to define supplier manufacturing strategies, review process plans, identify manufacturability risks, and improve the likelihood of delivering conforming hardware on schedule.
• Assess suppliers' manufacturing processes, equipment, workforce, quality systems, special-process controls, qualification paths, current loading, surge capacity, and ability to meet Oklo's forecast production rates.
• Translate supplier assessments into actionable technical recommendations for Engineering and clear capability guidance for Procurement, while preserving Procurement's ownership of commercial negotiations, contracts, and supplier relationships.
• Identify critical manufacturing constraints and fragile supply-chain nodes; develop mitigation options such as alternate processes, supplier development plans, second sources, design changes, phased capacity investments, or selective in sourcing.
• Support technical vetting and due diligence of potential suppliers alongside Engineering, Quality, and Procurement, including site visits, process reviews, readiness assessments, and production-rate validation.
• Develop industrialization and manufacturing-readiness roadmaps that bridge FOAK builds to repeatable production, including learning-curve assumptions, yield and throughput improvement, tooling, automation, qualification,…