Director Of Manufacturing – Spaceborne Radar Payloads

Director Of Manufacturing – Spaceborne Radar Payloads

Kapta Space, a VC-funded early-stage startup in Seattle, WA, is breaking new ground in Geospatial Intelligence. Our technology centers around a proven, scalable electronically-steered radar for sophisticated spaceborne applications such as earth observation using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques, as well as enabling advanced defense missions such as target tracking on the ground and in the air.

Kapta is seeking a Director of Manufacturing – Spaceborne Radar Payloads to lead the manufacturing strategy and execution from production planning and material flow through assembly, integration, environmental testing, qualification, and final delivery. The ideal candidate combines deep hands-on experience in high-reliability electronics manufacturing with the leadership skills required to scale production while maintaining the rigorous quality, traceability, and configuration-control standards required for space hardware.

The Director of Manufacturing will work closely with Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, Program Management, and Operations leadership to transition products from development into repeatable, scalable production.

• Lead all manufacturing activities for space-qualified radar, RF, microwave, digital, and electronic assemblies.
• Develop and execute the manufacturing strategy to support current programs and future production growth.
• Establish manufacturing capacity, staffing, equipment, tooling, and facility requirements.
• Build a high-performing manufacturing organization with clear accountability, processes, and performance metrics.
• Establish production schedules and ensure on-time delivery of hardware to program milestones.
• Drive continuous improvement in throughput, yield, cycle time, labor efficiency, and manufacturing cost.
• Manage all facilities maintenance and sustainability initiatives ensuring reliable and repeatable business operations infrastructure across all departmental functions.

• Oversee the manufacturing of complex, high-reliability electronic assemblies and systems from prototype through qualification and production.
• Establish robust processes for PCB assembly, electronic box builds, RF/microwave assemblies, harnesses, mechanical integration, and system-level integration and test.
• Ensure manufacturing processes are appropriate for space-qualified hardware, including workmanship, contamination control, ESD control, handling, cleanliness, and configuration management.
• Support production of engineering development units, qualification units, flight units, and spares.
• Partner with engineering to develop Design for Manufacturability (DFM), Design for Assembly (DFA), and Design for Test (DFT) practices.

• Develop standardized work instructions, manufacturing processes, travelers, routings, tooling, fixtures, and work-cell layouts.
• Implement lean manufacturing and continuous-improvement methodologies appropriate for a range of medium-to-high volume, high-complexity space hardware.
• Establish manufacturing KPIs including first-pass yield, schedule adherence, cycle time, labor hours, rework, scrap, and warranty costs.
• Identify production bottlenecks and implement corrective actions.
• Develop scalable processes that can transition from prototype production to higher-rate manufacturing without compromising reliability.

• Partner closely with Quality and Mission Assurance to maintain compliance with applicable space and aerospace quality requirements.
• Ensure manufacturing operations comply with applicable workmanship standards and customer requirements, such as AS9100, NASA, ECSS, IPC, J-STD-001, and related space/aerospace standards, as applicable.
• Establish strong process controls, inspection points, acceptance criteria, and manufacturing records.
• Participate in root-cause investigations and corrective/preventive actions.
• Maintain complete hardware traceability and configuration control throughout the manufacturing process.
• Support customer audits, qualification activities, failure investigations, and production readiness reviews.