The company is making a significant long-term investment in expanding U.S. manufacturing and developing secure, resilient domestic and allied supply chains. As regulatory requirements around component origin, supplier eligibility, market access, tariffs, and domestic content continue to evolve, these considerations are becoming fundamental inputs into product design and manufacturing strategy.
This leader will determine which capabilities to onshore, which suppliers to develop, and which technologies or manufacturing processes should be vertically integrated versus externally sourced. You will work across Hardware Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Regulatory, Trade Compliance, and Finance to translate regulatory and supply-chain constraints into actionable business decisions.
This is a highly visible role with the opportunity to influence major sourcing, manufacturing, supplier-development, and capital-allocation decisions. What You’ll Own:
Supply Chain & Manufacturing Strategy
Develop the strategic roadmap for creating secure, scalable, and compliant supply chains. Determine which technologies and capabilities should be onshored, vertically integrated, developed with strategic suppliers, or maintained externally.
Onshoring & Supplier Development
Set priorities for securing critical commodities and expanding domestic and allied-country supply. Where a suitable supply base does not currently exist, determine whether to develop a supplier, bring the capability in-house, or work with engineering to design around the constraint.
Make-vs-Buy & Vertical Integration
Build and defend business cases for bringing manufacturing capabilities in-house. Recommendations will incorporate capital requirements, ramp assumptions, capacity, tooling, yield, supply-chain resilience, regulatory exposure, and long-term economics.
Regulatory & Product Risk
Partner closely with regulatory and trade-compliance teams to understand changing requirements and translate them into sourcing and manufacturing decisions. Maintain an evidence-based view of product and supply-chain exposure and communicate risks in terms of schedule, revenue, cost, and market access.
Relevant frameworks may include NDAA restrictions, the American Security Drone Act, country-of-origin requirements, FCC requirements, tariffs, and federal supply-chain restrictions.
NPI & Supplier-of-Record Decisions
Work alongside Global Supply Managers and hardware engineering during new product introduction to influence supplier-of-record and approved-vendor decisions. Bring regulatory, origin, resiliency, and compliance considerations into design reviews early enough for engineering teams to act on them.
Multi-Tier Supply Chain Traceability
Build greater visibility beyond Tier 1 suppliers, establishing multi-tier bill-of-materials traceability, country-of-origin information, and chain-of-custody visibility across purchased and internally manufactured components.
Cost & Compliance Optimization
Identify sourcing moves that simultaneously advance compliance, tariff, domestic-content, resiliency, and cost objectives. Help develop domestic sourcing strategies that can become economically competitive with traditional global supply chains.
What You Bring:
- 10+ years of experience across supply chain, manufacturing operations, commodity management, or operations strategy, including at least three years in a regulated hardware environment where sourcing decisions carried meaningful legal or contractual implications.
- Experience influencing component and supplier selection during product design, including NPI, design reviews, supplier-of-record decisions, or approved-vendor-list decisions.
- Credibility across both the sourcing organization and factory floor, with the ability to engage on capacity, tooling, ramp, yield, supplier qualification, and manufacturing economics.
- Direct ownership of a multi-tier country-of-origin, supplier-compliance, or trade-compliance program.
- Experience personally building and defending a make-vs-buy or vertical-integration analysis, including capital expenditure and production-ramp assumptions.
- A track record of translating complex technical and regulatory findings into executive-level business decisions.
- Demonstrated ability to influence engineering, sourcing, and manufacturing decisions even when you do not have formal authority over the teams involved.
- Working knowledge of NDAA 889/848, country-of-origin and substantial-transformation analysis, Buy American domestic-content requirements, or DFARS/FAR flow-downs.
- Experience within aerospace & defense, UAS, defense electronics, complex electromechanical hardware, EMS, or contract manufacturing.
- Commodity experience involving batteries/cells, motors and magnetics, imaging or thermal sensors, PCB or PCBA.
- Experience standing up a production line or transitioning an externally sourced manufacturing process in-house.
- Familiarity with federal supply-chain qualification or assessment processes.
- Experience developing new domestic or allied-country suppliers where an established supply base did not previously exist.
The position will begin as an individual contributor, with the opportunity to build a focused team as the program grows. The role will also have regular exposure to senior leadership, particularly around manufacturing strategy, supply-chain risk, and capital-allocation decisions.
