Staff Equipment Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Divergent is building the new industrial age. Every day, our teams design, manufacture, and assemble advanced systems for some of the world's most demanding industries. Our integrated engineering and manufacturing platform transforms complex designs into production-ready solutions, helping customers move faster, build smarter, and deliver critical systems when they matter most. Divergent is a qualified Tier 1 supplier to global automotive OEMs and supports leading U.S. aerospace and defense companies. 

Join us and help push the boundaries of what can be built.

Purpose

Join our mission to redefine aerospace and automotive manufacturing through advanced Additive Manufacturing. We are seeking a hands-on Additive Manufacturing Equipment Engineer to help transition next-generation Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) production equipment from development into high-volume manufacturing. 

This role helps ensure our production equipment is stable, reliable, scalable, and capable of delivering world-class safety, quality, delivery, and cost performance. As our manufacturing footprint expands across multiple factories, you will solve equipment problems at the machine level and help transform those solutions into engineering standards deployed across the entire fleet. 

Success in this role requires strong troubleshooting skills, independent technical judgment, and the drive to grow into broader fleet-level ownership. You will work alongside senior equipment engineers to stabilize new machines, improve reliability, and build the standards that carry the fleet as it scales. 

The Role

As Staff Equipment Engineer, you will be a recognized technical authority on production L-PBF equipment. You will lead multiple projects at once, define the technical approach for them, and work across Equipment Engineering, Service, Operations, Quality, and Development Engineering. You will mentor engineers on the team and help set the standards by which the team works. The Equipment Engineering team focuses on the three areas below, and you will help lead all of them.

You will: 

1. Support Service and Operations

• Improve existing work instructions and write new ones where gaps exist, with the goal of Service team autonomy for most day-to-day issues.
• Act as a technical resource for operators and Service, including formally as part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA). This includes taking the lead on novel issues that existing procedures do not cover.
• Support preventative maintenance improvements based on observed equipment performance, and define how performance data should drive PM content and intervals.
• Mentor engineers, technicians, and operators so that knowledge from difficult investigations moves out of individuals and into the system.

1. Own Equipment Reliability and Resolve Fleet Problems

• Take technical ownership of assigned equipment after qualification, and track performance against safety, quality, delivery, and cost baselines.
• Mine existing datasets to discover issues, in particular machine process data and downstream printed part data (non-conformances, witness coupons), and connect the two to find causes that neither dataset shows alone.
• Develop trend and reliability data across the fleet, and use it to decide what the team should work on first.
• Initiate and complete RCCAs end to end: identify the issue, set short-term containment, and drive long-term corrective action. Lead the most complex or cross-functional investigations and coach others through theirs.
• Engage with Development Engineering: provide regular input on machine reliability and recommend targeted fixes with input from Operations and Service. Prioritized requests to the Development organization are an output of the team, not of one person, and you will help the team build and defend that priority list.
• Drive cost reduction through equipment optimization.

1. Change and Configuration Management

• Determine when and where specific changes to assets are made, and help define what does and does not need formal change control.
• Support development and improvements to both the change approval process and the configuration control process.
• Document lessons learned so they can be standardized across the fleet and future factories.

Additional Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy and priorities for assigned projects and programs, and give clear, data-backed recommendations to management on tradeoffs.
• Support installation, commissioning, FAT/SAT, qualification, and production readiness for new equipment and factory expansion.
• Support quality compliance (AS9100, AMS, PPAP) and the analysis of equipment-related quality issues.
• Provide input on Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Reliability (DFR) for next-generation machines.

Basic Qualifications

• Ability to lawfully access information and technology that is subject to US export controls.
• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related discipline.
• 8+ years of engineering experience in manufacturing, equipment, or reliability engineering, or in advanced production environments, including 3+ years in metal additive manufacturing (e.g., Laser Powder Bed Fusion or similar).
• Experience with technical leadership, specifically with mentoring other engineers or technicians.
• Experience owning the sustaining performance of production equipment and leading it through launch or ramp.
• Deep troubleshooting skill across mechanical, electrical, and controls systems, including problems that cross those boundaries.
• Demonstrated ability to lead root cause investigations using structured methodologies (e.g., RCCA, 5 Whys, Fishbone, Fault Tree) on recurring or ambiguous problems, and to verify that corrective actions held.
• Strong analytical and data-driven decision-making skills, including finding problems in large datasets and not only responding to reported failures.
• Ability to lead and influence across engineering, operations, quality, maintenance, and service teams without direct authority, and to communicate clearly with people at very different levels of technical depth.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) or other metal additive manufacturing technologies.
• Experience in aerospace, automotive, semiconductor, or other high-volume precision manufacturing environments.
• Knowledge of AS9100, AMS, PPAP, APQP, or equivalent quality systems.
• Exposure to equipment reliability engineering, OEE improvement, or preventative maintenance programs.
• Experience working with machine sensor data or manufacturing analytics.
• Experience with controls systems, PLCs, industrial automation, or machine integration.
• Experience supporting capital equipment installation or commissioning. 

Compensation

At Divergent, our pay range is based on the level of the job. For this role, we will consider candidates at levels E04 - E06 as evaluated through our interview process. 

• Engineer II / E04: $111,300 - $153,040
• Sr. Engineer / E05: $128,520 - $176,720
• Staff Engineer / E06: 148,430 - 204,090

Pay Range

$111,300—$176,720 USD

What We Offer:

• Holistic Compensation Package: Enjoy a world-class compensation package that includes a competitive salary, equity plan, and discretionary results-based incentive bonus opportunities, ensuring you're truly valued for your contributions.
• Wellness and Time Off: Embrace a healthy lifestyle with paid vacation, sick time, and company holidays, including a year-end shutdown to recharge. We support growing families with paid parental leave, recognizing the importance of bonding time.
• Comprehensive Health and Wellness: Prioritize your well-being with our comprehensive health and wellness benefits, offering both HMO and Premium PPO options. Additionally, benefit from company-sponsored life insurance and short and long-term disability coverage for peace of mind.
• Investment in Growth: We're committed to your professional development. Take advantage of reimbursement opportunities for learning and development initiatives, empowering you to continuously expand your skill set and reach peak performance.
• Collaborative and High-Performing Environment: Join our collaborative, dynamic, and high-performing team within a fast-paced, mission-driven company. Together, we're disrupting the traditional manufacturing industry, fostering innovation, and integrating people and technology to reduce our footprint. 

Equal Employment Opportunity
Divergent is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or veteran status, or any other applicable state or federal protected characteristic. Divergent provides affirmative action in employment for qualified Individuals with Disabilities and Protected Veterans in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act.
EEO Poster 

In order to adjust to changes in our business, it may become necessary to add, remove or modify certain duties and responsibilities, or to reassign you to another job position. From time to time you may be asked to work on special projects or to assist with other work. Your cooperation and assistance in performing such additional work is expected. 
 
E-Verify: Right to Work
Our company participates in E-Verify. E-Verify is a program that electronically confirms a candidate's eligibility to work in the United States after completing the Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9). The information provided on the Form I-9 is compared to the records contained in the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases. This helps employers verify the identity and employment eligibility of newly hired employees.
Eligibility to Work Poster (English) | Eligibility to Work Poster (Spanish)
 
Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance (FCIHO)
Pursuant to the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance (FCIHO), we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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