Production Manager, Aerospace Industry

The Production Manager, Welding is responsible for leading all TIG welding operations, ensuring exceptional product quality, workforce development, safety compliance, and operational performance. This role manages welding personnel, drives continuous improvement initiatives, and serves as the technical leader for TIG welding processes.Lead from the Floor: This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll work alongside your team to solve problems and improve operations.Drive Operational Excellence: Champion Lean Manufacturing, process improvements, and equipment reliability.Industry-Leading Quality: Help maintain rigorous aerospace quality standards, including customer and NADCAP requirements.Key Responsibilities:Direct daily activities of TIG welders, weld-prep personnel, and team leads to ensure safety, productivity, and on-time delivery.Assign work based on welder qualifications, skill matrices, and product requirements. Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) including on-time delivery, throughput, scrap, labor efficiency, and schedule attainment.Monitor first-pass yield, weld defects, rework, and scrap trends while implementing corrective actions.Establish and maintain welder qualification standards, audits, and continuous improvement initiatives to improve weld quality and consistency.Partner with Engineering, Manufacturing, and Quality teams to resolve welding issues, improve fixturing, and increase productivity.Promote a culture of accountability, safety compliance, and operational excellence across the welding departmentEnsure compliance with aerospace and defense quality standards, including AS9100 and customer-specific requirements.Bottleneck Forecasting: Forecast bottlenecks before they ground us and solve them before they're even noticed.Use standard supply chain processes and partner with the Supply Chain team to develop material replenishment system for the manufacturing areas.Required Qualifications:Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations Management, or related discipline.Knowledge of the SAP system, MS office profound knowledge, supply chain and quality knowledge.Strong understanding of Lean Manufacturing, Continuous Improvement, and Operational Excellence methodologies.Proven skills as a problem-solver and a record of meeting deadlines and completing tasks on time, on budget and at an acceptable level of qualityHave good interpersonal skills, be able to negotiate and manage conflicts of interests.Preferred Qualifications:5 years' of Supervisory experience within an engineering and manufacturing businessExperience with aerospace thermal management systems, heat exchangers, brazing operations, precision fabrication, welding, or complex assembly environments.Other Requirements:Due to the nature of our business programs and products, applicants must have the legal right to work in the US and additionally must be legally authorized to access export-controlled information and source code.Demonstrated ability and willingness to use AI tools to improve productivity, decision-marking, work quality, and to reduce costs. The successful candidate must be able to identify appropriate AI use cases and critically evaluate AI-generated outputs