Director of Manufacturing Operations & Factory

Job Description

Job Description

At Orchard, we’re securing America’s food supply by building the AI Farmer that automates our nation’s farms. We are the industry leader, growing rapidly, and backed by more than $25 million from leading investors, including Quiet Capital, Shine Capital, and General Catalyst.

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars in crop value are lost because critical farming decisions are made using incomplete and imprecise data. We’re building the technology to change that.

Our AI-powered camera systems mount to tractors and scan millions of trees, vines, and plants, capturing precise data on yield estimates, fruit size, crop health, disease, and more. We train edge vision AI models that analyze every plant and determine exactly what interventions and treatments it needs. That intelligence flows into FruitScope OS, our farm-management platform, where growers can understand their crops, make better decisions, and direct operations in the field.

Today, Orchard’s technology is trusted by some of our nation’s largest farms. They use our products to grow higher-quality crops while reducing chemical use and operating costs, helping them farm more profitably and sustainably than ever before.

Our Culture:

• Unshakeable Resilience – Our customers feed millions of people, and our customers depend on us. We are ultra-hardworking, never give up, and we do whatever it takes.

• Always Keep Moving – We move fast, waste no time, and have an extreme bias towards action. Progress compounds every day, and our impact is measured in decades.

• Improve Everything – At 1% success, we save millions of pounds of food from going to waste. If we are 100% successful we will impact the lives of billions of people across the world.

• Farmers First – Every team member spends at least a few days in the fields with our farmers each month.

• No Job Beneath Us – We’re low ego, own every outcome, and are all working towards the same goal.

The Role:

Orchard builds rugged AI-powered camera systems that operate on farm vehicles in dust, heat, vibration, rain, and demanding agricultural environments. We’re hiring our first manufacturing leader to build and own the manufacturing operation behind Orchard’s rapidly growing fleet of camera systems.

As Director of Manufacturing Operations & Factory, you will personally design, launch, and run Orchard’s San Francisco factory from the ground up. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role responsible for turning Engineering designs into systems that can be built reliably, repeatedly, and economically as we scale.

You’ll own production, capacity planning, technician training and management, procurement, inventory, and manufacturing quality. You’ll initially report directly to our CEO, and you will work closely with Hardware Engineering on design for manufacturability, BOMs, and engineering changes, but this is an operating role accountable for safety, throughput, quality, and production outcomes.

What You’ll Own

• Build and scale our factory: Design our assembly processes, production flow, work instructions, fixtures, tooling, test stations, safety policies, and production schedules.

• Plan capacity and production: Translate our commercial forecasts into capacity, labor, supply chain, purchasing, and production plans.

• Build the assembly team: Hire, train, schedule, and manage a team of electromechanical assembly technicians capable of working independently with consistency and quality.

• Own supply chain and inventory: Purchase components, manage suppliers, track lead times and inventory, anticipate shortages, and ensure materials are available ahead of builds.

• Build the quality system: Establish incoming, in-process, and final QA, testing, build records, traceability, and processes for addressing defects and recurring issues.

• Own production readiness: Work with Hardware Engineering on BOMs, design changes, new-product introduction, and design-for-manufacturing improvements.

• Own manufacturing performance: Own manufacturing cost, throughput, first-pass yield, rework, and other production KPIs, and continuously improve processes as production grows.

• Deliver finished systems: Ensure every system is built, tested, documented, serialized, packaged, and ready for handoff to Deployment Operations.

What We Look For

• 5-7 years of experience in manufacturing engineering, manufacturing operations, production, or a related hardware field.

• Experience building or scaling production for complex electromechanical products.

• Comfortable leading technicians while remaining hands-on with assembly, tooling, inventory, and production processes.

• Experience with procurement, suppliers, inventory, BOMs, production planning, and ERP/MRP systems.

• Strong understanding of manufacturing quality, documentation, process control, and root-cause analysis.

• Hands-on mechanical and electrical intuition, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to deliver.

• High agency and proactive: you identify risks early, solve problems directly, and build systems that prevent them from recurring.

• Low ego, highly organized, and able to manage many moving pieces without losing attention to detail.

• High standards for safety, quality, documentation, and delivery.

• Experience with rugged electronics, robotics, automotive, industrial equipment, or other field-deployed hardware is a plus.

About the Opportunity

• Full-time role, five days a week at our San Francisco office / factory.

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage with 100% of employee premiums covered.

• The opportunity to build Orchard’s factory and manufacturing organization from the ground up.

• Our team is close-knit and highly driven. You’ll work closely with our CEO, Hardware Engineering, Operations, and the field organization.

• We move fast, and sometimes this means staying late or working weekends.

• We’re deeply motivated by the impact we’re making – every system we build and deploy means less food that goes to waste, and more people who are fed.