Senior Tooling Engineer

Senior Tooling Engineer

Torrance, California, United States

$ 140,000.00 - 230,000.00 (US Dollar)

Castelion is bringing a new approach to defense development and production: one that focuses on short, iterative design cycles, rapid testing in development, and modern commercial manufacturing strategies for production at scale. We're designing, building, and testing next generation long range strike weapons systems to give America and its Allies a definitive edge and deter future conflicts.

Senior Tooling Engineer

Castelion is seeking a Senior Tooling Engineer to join our Tooling team. In this role, you will own the end-to-end development of tooling for our products, from concept until implementation on the production floor. You will architect and implement innovative tooling solutions to achieve aggressive production cost, quality, and delivery targets.

Responsibilities

• Tooling Design and Development: Design and develop complex tooling systems, including jigs, fixtures, molds, dies, and assembly tools, for aerospace manufacturing processes. Utilize CAD software to create detailed tool designs and ensure compatibility with production requirements. Perform tolerance stack-up analysis and finite element analysis (FEA) to validate tool designs for durability and precision.
• Process Optimization: Collaborate with manufacturing and production teams to identify opportunities for improving tooling efficiency, reducing cycle times, and enhancing product quality.
• Project Leadership: Lead tooling projects from concept through to production, including requirements gathering, design reviews, prototyping, and validation. Manage project timelines, budgets, and resources to ensure on-time delivery of tooling solutions. Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior tooling engineers and technicians.
• Quality and Compliance: Ensure all tooling designs comply with aerospace industry standards (e.g., AS9100, NADCAP) and customer specifications. Conduct risk assessments and implement design for manufacturability (DFM) principles to minimize defects and ensure repeatability. Support quality assurance teams in developing inspection criteria and validating tooling performance.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with design engineers to ensure tooling new product designs. Partner with supply chain teams to select appropriate materials, coatings, and manufacturing methods for tooling. Coordinate with production teams to troubleshoot tooling issues and implement corrective actions.

Basic Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, or Manufacturing Engineering (or related field).
• Minimum of 5+ years of experience in tooling design and development.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Proven record in supporting NPI, pilot runs, and transition to production; delivering robust and scalable manufacturing systems.
• Demonstrated success in troubleshooting complex build issues and driving corrective actions.
• Skilled at interfacing with design, systems, test, and supplier teams to close the loop on manufacturability and production readiness.
• Experience in regulated or defense environments
• Aptitude for mentoring and influencing cross-functional teams without direct reporting relationships.

Leadership Qualities

Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving. Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented. Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains. Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support.

High Commitment, High Initiative. A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion's mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company's technical goals and prevent hardware blockers. Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere. Strong sense of accountability and integrity.

Clear Communicator. Proactively communicates blockers. Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers. Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships. Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.

ITAR Requirements:

• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Employment with Castelion is governed on the basis of competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.