Director of Manufacturing

Loft Orbital•Abu Dhabi• Full Time

Posted 6 months ago• Manufacturing

Job Description

Orbitworks is building satellites at a pace and scale that demand world-class manufacturing leadership. As our Director of Manufacturing, you will be the force that turns cutting-edge engineering into reliable, repeatable, and scalable production. This role sits at the heart of Orbitworks’ mission: taking complex, high-performance satellite designs and converting them into hardware that can be assembled, tested, and delivered with speed and precision.

You will own the full design-to-manufacturing pipeline—driving DFX into early engineering conversations, ensuring MGSE and EGSE systems are robust and ready, and building the processes and teams that keep production flowing without surprises. This is a role for a practical, hands-on leader who thrives in ambiguity, solves real problems on real hardware, and knows how to ship.

If you have led manufacturing and test teams through high-pressure builds, closed the gap between engineering intent and production reality, and delivered complex hardware on schedule, this is where your experience becomes a strategic advantage. Join us and help shape a manufacturing organization capable of producing high-autonomy satellite systems at scale.

Key Responsibilities:

Manufacturing Leadership & Strategy

Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team covering manufacturing engineering, test engineering, MGSE, and EGSE design, implementation, and maintenance.

Define the manufacturing strategy for design-to-production, ensuring alignment with company objectives, cost, quality, and schedule.

Drive continuous improvement initiatives across manufacturing processes, tooling, and test infrastructure.

Design-to-Manufacturing Execution

Accountable to oversee the translation of engineering requirements and product designs into actionable manufacturing execution items:

Work instructions, assembly procedures, and test plans

Tooling and ground support equipment (GSE) requirements

Test scripts, verification, and validation protocols

Ensure all manufacturing outputs accurately reflect engineering intent and functional requirements.

Provide DFX feedback to engineering teams early in the design process to optimize manufacturability, testability, reliability, and cost.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Act as the primary manufacturing interface within OPS (Production, Facilities, Supply Chain, QA) and other domains (Engineering, Software, and Technical Leads).

Facilitate collaboration between engineering design, integration, and manufacturing teams to ensure seamless handoff and execution.

Review and approve manufacturing-related deliverables, including test plans, GSE specifications, and assembly instructions.

Ground Support Equipment & Test Systems

Oversee MGSE and EGSE development, including definition, design, implementation, and lifecycle maintenance.

Ensure test and verification systems meet engineering requirements and enable efficient production validation.

Manage resource allocation and prioritization for test and manufacturing support activities.

Operational Excellence & Risk Management

Develop and enforce manufacturing standards, procedures, and best practices.

Identify potential manufacturing risks and proactively mitigate issues related to design, assembly, or testing.

Implement KPIs to monitor manufacturing efficiency, quality, and compliance with engineering intent.

Experience - Must Haves

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Industrial, Manufacturing, Mechanical, Aerospace, or Electrical Engineering is required. Master’s degree is preferred.

10+ years of experience in advanced manufacturing environments, preferably aerospace, satellite, or high-tech electronics.

Proven experience in leading cross-functional manufacturing teams covering ME, TE, MGSE, and EGSE.

Strong understanding of DFX, design-to-manufacturing principles, and test engineering.

Experience developing work instructions, tooling, GSE, test plans, and scripts based on engineering requirements.

Hands-on experience with MGSE/EGSE design, implementation, and maintenance.

Excellent collaboration and communication skills, capable of interfacing with engineering, operations, and leadership teams.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in satellite or aerospace production environments (ideally LEO systems).

Familiarity with Agile or concurrent engineering methodologies.

Knowledge of regulatory standards and quality systems (AS9100, ISO9001).

Key Competencies

Leadership and team development

Strategic thinking and operational planning

Problem-solving and analytical skills

Process improvement and DFX guidance

Cross-functional collaboration

Hands-on technical expertise

Orbitworks' mission is to make space simple for organizations that want to deploy physical and virtual missions to space. Building on Loft Orbital's heritage, Orbitworks will be the first commercial firm in the United Arab Emirates to mass-manufacture satellites. Orbitworks aims to manufacture tens of satellites annually and operates out of a 50,000-square-foot facility in Abu Dhabi.