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Salary: USD 115,000 - 158,000 / annual
Rocket Lab is seeking a Senior Manufacturing Engineer I focused on Assembly & Integration to drive manufacturing excellence across the company's rocket and spacecraft production operations. This role sits at the intersection of design and production, responsible for transforming early-stage concepts into scalable, manufacturable systems.
You will prepare feasibility studies and conduct manufacturing R&D projects to validate new production approaches. Partner closely with Design Engineering teams to embed Design for Manufacturability principles into products, ensuring robustness and scalability. You'll engineer and deliver factory systems—designing, procuring, installing, and validating assembly, test, and verification processes from the ground up.
Key responsibilities include supporting development builds to uncover early learnings and accelerate production ramp-up, taking engineering ownership of production lines to remove blockers and improve yield, and triaging/diagnosing failures through deep technical investigation. You'll drive process improvements across manufacturing, test, and integration; contribute to change management by assessing risk and impact of design or process changes; and support business system enhancements to boost organizational effectiveness.
This is a hands-on role requiring collaboration across cross-functional teams to resolve complex, multifaceted manufacturing challenges. You'll work in a fast-paced environment where you own multiple complex assignments simultaneously with autonomy, and mentor others to raise the bar across teams.
Note: This position may require prolonged periods of sitting, standing, walking, computer work, and occasional exposure to moderate levels of noise, dust, and fumes in production areas. ITAR compliance required: must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State/Commerce.
QUALIFICATIONS (Required):
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronics, Computer Engineering, or similar
- 5+ years of technical experience in Manufacturing, Production, or Process Engineering environment
- Hands-on experience proactively identifying and solving systemic, multifaceted problems in complex manufacturing systems
- Ability to effectively deliver on multiple complex, multifaceted assignments simultaneously with autonomy
- Ability to effectively coach and mentor others to raise the bar across multiple teams
- Detailed technical knowledge in complex manufacturing processes
QUALIFICATIONS (Nice to Have):
- Working experience with environmental acceptance/production acceptance testing (vibration, shock, thermal, vacuum)
- Understanding of instrumentation, interfaces, and sensors (power supplies, oscilloscopes, serial devices, switch topologies, accelerometers, thermocouples, RTDs, 4-20mA sensors)
- Experience designing, implementing, and supporting production lines and/or build areas
- Experience transitioning products from design to production in fast-paced, iterative design environments
- Demonstrated experience with DFMEA, PFMEA methodologies, Fault Tree Analysis, Pareto analysis, root cause and corrective action
- Ability to effectively deliver on complex assignments with autonomy
