NPI & Manufacturing lead

You are the bridge between our engineering team and our manufacturing partners. You speak EE, ME, and embedded software well enough to push back on a designer when their part choice creates a sourcing or yield nightmare. You speak factory floor well enough to walk an SMT line in Shenzhen and know whether the operator is doing it right. This is not a procurement role.We are not looking for someone whose primary skill is issuing POs, managing supplier portals, or running ERP. You will own purchasing, but it is downstream of the real work, which is turning engineering intent into a manufacturable, testable, shippable product, and then keeping that product flowing. You will own the BOM, drive NPI through pilot and production ramp, run our CM relationship in Asia, and be the person the CEO and engineering leads turn to for ground truth on cost, yield, lead time, capacity, and risk. If a component has a 40 week lead time and nobody flagged it, that is on you. If a CM misses a DPPM target, that is on you. If we ship on time, that is on you too. The product, so you can self select Small electronic device: SoM based compute, camera modules, sensors, plastic enclosure, cable assemblies, packaging BOM in the low to mid hundreds of line items BOM cost in the low hundreds of dollars per unit Annual volume scaling from low thousands toward tens of thousands of units in years one and two Manufactured at an EMS in Asia today; North American final assembly and test on the roadmap If you have run manufacturing for cars, aircraft, ships, satellites, buildings, oil and gas equipment, or any other multi million dollar capital good, this is not the right role for you. The cadence, decision making, supplier landscape, and unit economics are entirely different. We will not interview for that experience. What you will do Be the technical interface between engineering (EE, ME, embedded) and our CM. Translate design intent into manufacturable reality and drive DFM and DFT feedback back into engineering. Drive NPI: EVT, DVT, PVT builds, yield ramp, test station bring up, first article inspections. Own the BOM: part numbering, revisioning, ECO process, AVL, alternates, lifecycle management. Source components, qualify suppliers, and negotiate pricing, with priority on critical, long lead, and sole sourced items. Manage our existing CM in Asia through ramp, and qualify the next CM partner as we scale. Live on factory floors during builds, domestically and internationally, often, in person. Set and hit targets for landed cost, DPPM, OTD, FPY, and inventory turns. Build supplier scorecards, dual source critical components, and forecast component demand against the sales pipeline. Own logistics, customs, freight, and the path from finished goods to dealer receiving dock. Required Professional working fluency in Mandarin or Cantonese. Non negotiable. You will be the only person in the room who can follow what is actually being said. 5+ years (or equivalent shipping experience) owning manufacturing or NPI for small electronic or electromechanical products: consumer electronics, IoT, in cabin automotive electronics, sub $2,000 medical devices, prosumer hardware. Not aerospace, not automotive OEM, not heavy equipment, not industrial machinery, not construction. Equivalent experience means you have personally taken multiple products from prototype to volume production, even if your title did not always say so. Hands on BOM ownership of a product with 100+ line items, taken from prototype through volume production. Direct, recent experience qualifying and managing EMS or ODM partners in Asia (Shenzhen, Dongguan, Suzhou, Taiwan, or Vietnam). You can name the CMs you have worked with and the products you shipped with them. You can read a schematic, redline a mechanical drawing, and have an opinion about an FAI report. Willingness to travel internationally. Multi week trips to Asia during NPI and ramp are part of the job. Valid US driver's license. San Diego based or willing to relocate. On site at our office. Strong plus Prior seed to Series A hardware startup experience. You have personally taken a product from zero to first customer shipment. ADAS, dashcam, telematics, or other in vehicle electronics experience. Existing relationships with EMS partners, PCBA houses, plastics vendors, or component distributors in Asia. SoM and carrier board architectures, camera modules, or optical tuning supply chains. APICS CPIM or CSCP, or equivalent. Useful, but does not substitute for hands on experience. Compensation Base: $135,000 to $155,000 depending on experience Equity: meaningful early stage grant Health, dental, vision Relocation assistance for the right candidate #J-18808-Ljbffr Saferide.ai