Head of Manufacturing Engineering Automation & Controls
Hayward, California, United States$196k - $257kFull-timePosted 2mo ago
About the role
Leader responsible for developing and scaling Skydio's manufacturing systems for high-volume small UAS production, with a focus on factory automation, controls engineering, equipment development, and manufacturing systems architecture.
Responsibilities
- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing Manufacturing Engineering organization supporting production from new product introduction through high-volume manufacturing.
- Define the manufacturing engineering strategy, technical roadmap, organizational structure, and capabilities required to support significant production growth.
- Partner closely with Design Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Test Engineering, and Product teams to ensure products are designed for manufacturability, automation, testability, and scale.
- Establish manufacturing standards, design reviews, equipment specifications, process qualification methodologies, and production-readiness criteria.
- Lead the architecture, development, deployment, and lifecycle management of automated manufacturing equipment and production systems.
- Build strong internal capabilities in controls engineering, PLC programming, industrial robotics, motion control, machine vision, industrial networking, sensors, servo systems, safety systems, and automated material handling.
- Establish controls and automation standards that enable equipment to be deployed, supported, replicated, and scaled rapidly across production.
- Develop strategies for balancing manual, semi-automated, and fully automated manufacturing based on production rate, process capability, economics, and product maturity.
- Establish disciplined equipment development processes including requirements definition, design reviews, FAT/SAT, commissioning, process validation, and production acceptance.
- Partner with external automation integrators and equipment suppliers while developing critical automation and controls capabilities internally.
- Build a highly instrumented manufacturing environment where equipment and processes generate actionable production data.
- Partner with software and data teams to connect manufacturing equipment with MES, traceability, quality, and factory data systems.
- Develop automated collection and analysis of process parameters, equipment states, cycle times, downtime, quality results, and genealogy.
- Use manufacturing data to identify process drift, predict failures, improve yield, and accelerate root-cause analysis.
Qualifications
- 12+ years of experience in manufacturing engineering, automation engineering, controls engineering, equipment engineering, or related disciplines.
- 5+ years of experience leading engineering organizations responsible for manufacturing systems or factory automation.
- Demonstrated experience scaling complex electromechanical products into high-volume production.
- Experience in aerospace, automotive, robotics, industrial automation, electronics, battery, semiconductor, or another highly engineered manufacturing environment; aerospace experience strongly preferred.
- Deep understanding of manufacturing automation and controls, including several of the following: PLC and industrial controls architectures, Robotics and robotic cells, Servo and motion-control systems, Machine vision, Industrial networking and communications, Sensors and instrumentation, Automated test and inspection, Machine safety systems, SCADA/HMI systems, Manufacturing equipment software.
- Experience developing custom production equipment from concept through production deployment.
- Experience developing capital equipment strategies and managing significant CapEx programs.
- Strong understanding of DFM/DFA and the ability to influence product architecture to enable manufacturing scale and automation.
- Experience operating in environments requiring rigorous configuration management, traceability, process control, and quality systems.
- Demonstrated ability to recruit, develop, and lead multidisciplinary technical organizations.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to move between factory-level strategy and detailed engineering problems.
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Controls Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, or a related technical field.
- Obtaining FAA Part 107 certification within the first 60 days of employment is strongly encouraged for all Skydio employees and required for certain positions.
Skills
Required:Manufacturing engineering leadershipAutomation and controls strategyPLC programming
Benefits
- Paid vacation time
- Sick leave
- Holiday pay
- 401K savings plan
- Group health insurance plans
Last updated Sep 10, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Skydio
A family of flying robots.
AI-powered autonomous drones for Drone as First Responder (DFR), critical infrastructure inspection, tactical ISR, site security, surveying and mapping
DronesAutonomous SystemsInspectionSecurityMappingPublic SafetyNational Security
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