Principal Engineer, Manufacturing Systems

Principal Engineer, Manufacturing Systems

Torrance, California, United States

Neros is a defense technology company rebuilding America's drone industrial base. We design and manufacture high-performance unmanned systems that are tested in combat, iterated at startup speed, and built at massive scale. Our team culture is fast, hands-on, and obsessed with closing the gap between design and deployment.

As drones transform the character of warfare, Neros is delivering the systems the West needs to compete on the modern battlefield and deter the adversaries of democracy. We're hiring engineers, operators, and builders who want to move fast, take on extreme ownership, and get capability into the hands of warfighters in months, not years.

What You Will Be Doing

• Own technical architecture for internal manufacturing systems, MES workflows, integrations, and enterprise system boundaries
• Design and build production software for factory execution, including work orders, routing, material issue/consume, completion, serialization, genealogy, rework, and exception handling
• Define system boundaries across ERP, MES, QMS, CRM, internal applications, integrations, and operational data services
• Establish engineering standards for APIs, data models, permissions, audibility, observability, testing, release management, and operational reliability
• Build integration patterns that are reliable, supportable, and resilient to future system changes
• Partner directly with factory, quality, supply chain, warehouse, finance, and business systems stakeholders to translate operational complexity into simple, usable software
• Mentor future engineering hires and help shape the technical culture of the Manufacturing Systems team

You Should Have The Following

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant backend, platform, internal tools, systems, or infrastructure work
• Experience designing, building, and shipping production software in ambiguous or fast-changing environments
• Strong hands-on coding ability and recent experience contributing to production systems
• Experience designing APIs, data models, service boundaries, integration patterns, and reliable system-to-system workflows
• Strong judgment around build-vs-buy decisions, technical tradeoffs, and long-term system maintainability
• Experience working with cross-functional stakeholders outside engineering, including operations, manufacturing, warehouse, supply chain, quality, finance, or business systems teams
• Ability to reason about permissions, auditability, traceability, genealogy, data ownership, error handling, observability, and supportability
• Ability to operate as the first senior technical leader in a new function: hands-on, practical, and comfortable without a large team around them
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to work onsite with operational teams and support a fast-moving manufacturing environment

Nice To Have

• Experience with MES, manufacturing execution, shop-floor systems, QMS, WMS, ERP, CRM, or enterprise integrations
• Experience in hardware, aerospace, defense, robotics, drones, logistics, electronics, or high-volume manufacturing environments
• Experience with serialization, genealogy, traceability, routing, work orders, rework, material consumption, barcode scanning, or warehouse/manufacturing workflows
• Experience with workflow systems, audit trails, RBAC, event-driven systems, message queues, ETL/ELT, CDC, or integration platforms
• Experience building software in compliance-sensitive, audit-heavy, or regulated environments
• Experience leading or mentoring engineers without needing to move fully into people management

US Salary Range

$100,000 - $190,000 USD

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are considered part of Neros' total compensation package.

We're an equal opportunity employer. We welcome all applicants without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.