Manager Tool Die Making

Tool and Die Making Manager 2 – Assembly Tooling

Location:

Palmdale, California.

Relocation assistance may be available. Clearance required for start:
Yes (Secret). Travel:
Yes, 10% of the time.

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people’s lives around the world today and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation’s history — from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean to stealth bombers to landing on the moon.

We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage, and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity, and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they’re making history.

The Manager Tool Die Making 2 will be responsible for managing DCTs (Dimension Control Technicians), AEEs (Aircraft Equipment Expeditors), and MMMs (Milling Machinists) and Manufacturing Analysts across multiple shifts. They will develop technical large‑scale tooling statements of work, stand‑up and maintain the Tool Maintenance site leadership for cross‑functional training to support each statement of work. The selected candidate will ensure projects/designs are completed on schedule and within budget, manage direct and indirect budgets, and provide tooling/program support of manufacturing and tooling inspections for production transition and sustained efforts.

They will establish, maintain, and continuously improve processes and procedures to support program efforts in collaboration with other Aeronautics Systems Sector Tooling Management.

• Lead a large group of hourly non‑exempt employees, manufacturing analysts, and level 1 managers.
• Manage Tool Control & Accountability for all assembly and rotable tooling relative to our Palmdale facility.
• Manage and coordinate tooling activities across programs to ensure appropriate staffing actions are developed and executed.
• Own responsibility for program and technical performance while providing objective‑oriented directions to hard‑lined or dotted‑line reporting personnel, utilizing management guidelines and general policies.
• Monitor and manage risk items to ensure mitigating actions are effective and timely.
• Promote Lean, Knowledge Management, and other process improvement initiatives while sharing lessons learned and best practices throughout the organization.
• Manage personnel performance evaluation, merit planning, employee development and training, succession planning, and utilization of EVMS to manage labor and material costs.

This role follows a 9/80 work schedule with every other Friday off, managing teams across different shifts. This provides exposure to a wide variety of projects and customers in a very friendly team environment. We are looking for self‑motivated, proactive, and goal‑oriented people to help us grow our services and become even better at what we do. Our leaders at Northrop Grumman live our values daily and encourage our teams to do the same.

• Bachelor’s Degree and 5 years of related professional/military experience in manufacturing, aerospace, design, tooling, tool engineering, manufacturing engineering, integration, and/or fabrication industries, OR Master’s Degree and 3 years related experience in the same fields.
• Must have 2 years of prior management/leadership experience.
• Must be available to manage across shifts.
• Position requires a current and active DoD Secret clearance to start and the ability to obtain and maintain Program Special access within a reasonable period.

• Previous supervisory and management experience in managing large projects with an emphasis on metrology, machining, tool fabrication, manufacturing, assembly processes, and/or flight hardware production.
• Experience in managing shop schedules with dynamic priority changes.
• Aerospace or aviation industry experience managing metrology…