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MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING & ESTIMATING MANAGER | DFM, ESTIMATING & PRODUCTION
ENGINEER THE WORK. WIN THE BUSINESS. MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Our manufacturing client is seeking a senior, hands-on Manufacturing Engineering & Estimating Manager who will have significant influence over how the company engineers, quotes, launches, and grows its most important customer programs. This is not a desk-only engineering management role.
We are looking for someone who has spent years close to the work and understands how fabricated sheet metal products actually get made. The successful candidate will bring deep experience across manufacturing engineering, DFM, estimating, production planning, and customer interaction.
You should be equally comfortable reviewing a SolidWorks model with a customer, identifying DFM issues, determining how a product should be manufactured, building a realistic estimate and routing, planning material and work-center requirements, and working with the shop to solve problems during first articles and production ramp.
WHAT YOU'LL OWN
- Strategic Customer Programs: Serve as the technical lead for several of Pen's largest and most important customer programs.
- Customer Engineering: Work directly with customer engineering and purchasing teams to understand requirements, resolve design issues, and improve manufacturability.
- DFM & Technical Review: Review drawings, CAD models, specifications, tolerances, and RFQs for feasibility, manufacturability, and cost.
- Estimating & Costing: Lead estimating and ensure quotes reflect realistic material, labor, routing, tooling, outside processing, and production assumptions.
- Manufacturing Planning: Translate new programs from RFQ and prototype through first article and into repeatable production.
- Process Development: Develop manufacturing plans, routings, work instructions, material requirements, sequencing, and production requirements.
- Production Flow: Understand how work will move through lasers/turrets, press brakes, welding, hardware, assembly, and outside processing before it reaches the production floor.
- Engineering & Estimating Leadership: Manage and develop Pen's estimating and engineering resources.
- Sales Partnership: Partner with Sales on technical discovery, feasibility, costing, and major new opportunities.
- Operations Partnership: Work closely with Operations and Production to ensure jobs are released, planned, and scheduled intelligently.
- Capacity & Capital Planning: Identify work-center constraints, tooling requirements, automation opportunities, and equipment needs.
- First Articles & Ramp-Up: Support prototypes, first articles, production launches, and ramp-ups.
- Continuous Improvement: Review completed jobs against estimates and improve future costing, routings, labor standards, and production assumptions.
- Account Growth: Build strong technical relationships with customers and help expand existing strategic accounts.
WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR
A manufacturing engineer and estimator at heart who has developed the technical judgment to lead people, customers, and complex programs.
Required:
- 10+ years of hands-on experience in sheet metal fabrication, precision metal fabrication, or a similar contract manufacturing environment.
- Deep understanding of laser cutting, punching, press brake forming, welding, hardware insertion, assembly, and outside processing.
- Significant experience estimating and costing fabricated sheet metal products.
- Strong hands-on DFM and manufacturing engineering experience.
- Ability to read and critique engineering drawings, CAD models, tolerances, and specifications.
- SolidWorks or similar 3D CAD experience.
- Experience translating customer drawings/models into practical, repeatable manufacturing processes.
- Comfortable working directly with customers on technical and manufacturing issues.
- Strong understanding of labor standards, routings, material planning, sequencing, work-center capacity, and production planning.
- Experience supporting products from RFQ and first article through production ramp and recurring manufacturing.
- Willingness to be hands-on and spend significant time on the production floor.
- Must work on-site in Anaheim, CA.
PARTICULARLY RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
High-mix / low-to-medium-volume job shops | Sheet metal fabrication | Precision fabrication | Aerospace & defense | Data center infrastructure | Industrial equipment | Electronics enclosures | Contract manufacturing | AS9100 environments | ERP/MRP | CNC programming | Nesting | Fabrication software
Experience managing estimators or manufacturing engineers is strongly preferred.
IDEAL CANDIDATE
You are probably a fit if you have spent your career close to the work and developed expertise across engineering, estimating, planning, and production rather than specializing in only one of them.
You don't need someone else to tell you whether a part can be manufactured. You can look at the drawing or model, understand the required processes, walk the floor, talk to the people making it, identify the problems, estimate the work, and develop a practical production plan.
You also understand that great manufacturing engineering is customer-facing. Customers often need more than a build-to-print supplier. They need a manufacturing partner who can identify problems before production, improve designs, and help them successfully scale a product.
If you have grown from the shop floor, CNC programming, estimating, or hands-on sheet metal manufacturing engineering into a senior technical or leadership role, we are particularly interested in speaking with you.
A large team-management background is not required. Deep manufacturing judgment is.
WHY THIS OPPORTUNITY
This role sits at the intersection of engineering, estimating, sales, operations, and production.
Your work will directly influence which opportunities Pen pursues, how accurately they are quoted, how efficiently they are manufactured, and how successfully strategic customer programs move from concept to recurring production.
For the right person, this is an opportunity to become a key technical leader within a growing manufacturing organization while remaining close to the products, customers, and people doing the work.
Work Environment: On-site; significant interaction with engineering, estimating, operations, customers, and the production floor.
JOB ID: 181129
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Aimee Krisfalusi