Job Overview

AI and the rapid evolution of data-center infrastructure are creating new challenges in optical connectivity and the precision manufacturing equipment required to produce it at scale. We are looking for a machine design engineering leader who can convert complex manufacturing requirements into key precision equipment (enabling co-packaged optics in AI) that performs reliably, repeatedly, and at production scale.

As Senior Manager, Machine Design Engineering, you will lead and develop the Machine Design Engineering team while strengthening machine architecture and equipment-platform capabilities. You will guide equipment from requirements and architecture through development, validation, production release, factory ramp, and continuous improvement.

This is an opportunity for a leader who has shipped complex production equipment, learned through challenging launches, and knows how to turn successful machine designs into controlled, repeatable platforms. You will lead a team of highly capable technical leaders with deep expertise and strong points of view, and your job is to point that energy at the problems that matter most while keeping the team disciplined, decisive, and delivering. This is a high impact role enabling the most critical process.

Job Requirements

• Lead the architecture, development, integration, validation, release, and lifecycle improvement of complex precision manufacturing equipment.
• Establish equipment architecture, platform standards, and release practices that enable repeatable deployment and continuous learning across equipment generations.
• Drive equipment toward safety, micron-level performance, repeatability, process capability, throughput, yield, reliability, serviceability, and production readiness, using structured experimentation to separate machine variation from process variation and working with the process engineering team to stabilize the process.
• Own the sensing, metrology, and calibration capabilities designed into the machine, and partner with the software team on controls, algorithms, and machine software, to enable closed-loop, data-rich automation.
• Create disciplined equipment-development and release practices, including controlled designs, bills of materials, software, validation evidence, and acceptance criteria.
• Lead and develop the Advanced Machine Design Engineering team, strengthening technical depth, engineering leadership, execution discipline, and the ability to translate factory learning into better equipment and platforms.
• Channel a team of strong, independent-minded technical leaders: encourage rigorous technical debate, drive it to clear and timely decisions, and set the tempo by defining what "good enough" looks like at each stage and by when, so the team commits and executes once direction is set.

Core Competencies

• Precision Machine Development: Translates manufacturing and process requirements into robust machine architectures and production-ready equipment.
• Equipment Architecture and Industrialization: Develops scalable equipment platforms and moves complex machines from concept through production release and factory ramp.
• Metrology, Calibration, and Controls Integration: Designs sensing, metrology, and calibration into the machine and partners with the software team on controls, algorithms, and machine software to deliver intelligent, closed-loop manufacturing systems.
• Cross-Disciplinary Systems Leadership: Connects precision mechanics, motion, robotics, vision, controls, software, tooling, and inspection into integrated equipment solutions.
• Leading Strong Technical Leaders: Sets technical direction, earns the respect of experts through technical credibility, turns strong opinions into shared priorities and clear decisions, develops engineering talent, and builds capability for increasingly complex equipment challenges.
• Execution Discipline and Tempo: Sets clear priorities, decision rights, and dated definitions of done; holds leaders to commitments without stifling their technical judgment; resolves conflict quickly and directly.

What your background should look like

• Hands-on precision machine design experience, followed by experience leading and developing engineering teams that design precision machines, including senior, highly capable technical leaders, with the ability to set direction, turn strong debate into clear decisions, build capability, and hold technical leaders accountable for commitments and pace.
• Proven ability to take complex production equipment from requirements and architecture through design, build, integration, debug, acceptance testing, validation, release, factory ramp, and lifecycle improvement.
• Deep expertise in precision mechanical or optomechanical machine design, with systems-level depth in related areas such as motion, robotics, machine vision, sensing, automated inspection, machine metrology, tooling, and machine safety, and enough fluency in controls, software, and algorithms to make sound architecture tradeoffs with the software team.
• Process-physics understanding and the ability to translate process windows into equipment architecture and controls, with strong design of experiments (DOE) capability, including measurement system analysis and machine capability studies, used to characterize, center, and stabilize a process, demonstrated in precision assembly, fiber or optical processes, or other similarly demanding manufacturing environments.

Experience

• Optics experience is valuable, but not required. Strong candidates may come from custom machine builders, semiconductor equipment, robotics and precision automation, medical or life-science automation, photonics equipment, industrial laser systems, automated inspection and metrology, or other high-complexity capital-equipment environments.
• Preferred experience may include optical packaging, fiber attach, fiber-array assemblies, micro-optics, active or passive alignment, photonic-device assembly, precision optomechanical systems, modular equipment platforms, equipment replication, new-site launches, line architecture, machine software and algorithm development, machine metrology and calibration, or configuration-controlled equipment releases.

Education

• Minimum of 13  years of experience with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Optical, Industrial, Automation/Controls, Mechatronics, Software, or a related engineering field. An advanced degree is preferred.