Technical Operations Manager

About the Team
The Technical Operations team ensures our products are manufactured at the highest levels of quality, reliability, and efficiency. We bridge the gap between design and manufacturing, partnering with engineering and contract manufacturers (CMs) to deliver seamless transitions from prototype to high-volume production. Our team sets operational standards, builds scalable processes, and ensures that every program lands on time, on quality, and on cost.

About the Role
As a Technical Operations Manager, you will lead onsite manufacturing readiness for high-volume, complex electronic assemblies. You will own process definition and readiness, align global CMs, and drive factory flow, quality, schedule, and throughput efficiency. This role requires deep familiarity with complex mechanical and electro-mechanical systems and a proven ability to take programs from New Product Introduction (NPI) through mass production (MP).

In this role, you will:

• Lead CM readiness across multiple sites, ensuring smooth transitions from prototype to sustained MP.

• Partner with design and CM teams to assess manufacturing feasibility, define readiness gates, and tie plans to launch goals.

• Drive DFM/DFA for scale, enabling high-yield, high-throughput assembly processes.

• Define process strategies, including equipment selection, automation levels, SOPs, and control systems.

• Plan and execute process and equipment trials, securing capability (GR&R, Cp/Cpk) and locking process windows before MP.

• Build and optimize capacity/takt models, balance lines, and remove bottlenecks to improve cycle time and OEE.

• Manage technical risk with pre-mortems, DOEs, and containment plans to safeguard quality and schedule.

• Lead failure analysis and continuous improvement efforts, feeding back corrective actions into specs and control plans.

• Ensure serialization, attribute capture, and data integrity within CM traceability/MES systems.

• Drive vendor/CM performance with scorecards, ECN execution, and crisp communication across teams and executives.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 8–12+ years of experience in manufacturing operations, process engineering, or technical program management for complex electronic assemblies.

• Have a strong record of leading NPIs into MP with global CMs while achieving yield, cost, and quality targets.

• Bring deep knowledge of DFM/DFA, DOE, SPC, disciplined change control, and factory problem-solving.

• Are fluent with PFMEA, Control Plans, SPC/CPK, MSA/GR&R, DOE, 8D, and related tools.

• Excel at program planning, execution, and cross-functional communication at both executive and factory levels.

• Are comfortable specifying traceability requirements and verifying MES/PLM/MRP system coverage.

• Hold a BS/MS in Manufacturing, Mechanical, Electrical, or Industrial Engineering (or equivalent).

Why this role matters
You’ll establish the operational foundation for our most visible launches, ensuring that factories, processes, and partners are prepared to deliver world-class product quality and the best customer experience from day one.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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