Manufacturing Intelligence Engineer

Clutch Canada; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 132,000 - 144,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

Public Transit/Commuter Plans

Parental Leave

Job summary

A leading technology firm is looking for a versatile Forward-Deployed Manufacturing Engineer in Palo Alto, CA. The role involves traveling to customer factory sites across North America to oversee missions that enhance manufacturing efficiency through cutting-edge AI technology. Candidates should have over 3 years of experience in electronics manufacturing, excellent communication skills, and a willingness to travel frequently. The position offers a competitive salary in the range of $132,000–$144,000, along with comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience in electronics manufacturing.
• Willingness to travel up to 80% of the time for factory site visits.
• Ability to deliver on missions despite challenges.
• Excellent written and spoken English, ideally with Mandarin or Spanish.

Responsibilities

• Travel to customer factory sites to execute missions.
• Build relationships with customer and factory stakeholders.
• Leverage software to drive value and performance.

Skills

Experience in electronics manufacturing

Excellent communication skills

Ability to build relationships

Problem-solving

Bilingual communication (English/Mandarin or Spanish)

Job description

Forward-Deployed Manufacturing Engineer

Palo Alto, CA

Sales

Hybrid

Full-time

Instrumental technology is used by the world’s most admired electronics brands like Bose, Cisco, and SolarEdge to significantly reduce the 20 cents of waste in every dollar spent on manufacturing. Our technology leverages AI from data coming off the manufacturing floor to automate failure identification and resolution, improving yield, quality, and time to market.

Instrumental is seeking a versatile Forward-Deployed Engineer to join our tight-knit, high-performance Customer Experience team. This unique role will blend your hands-on experience in electronics manufacturing environments with our cutting‑edge AI technology to deliver rapid and impactful results to our customers around the world. You’ll be involved in executing equipment deployments into complex electronics manufacturing lines, training Instrumental algorithms, leveraging our software to accelerate value delivery, and building critical relationships with our customers and their manufacturing partners. You’ll be working with Instrumental’s fastest-growing customers and delivering against core company missions.

This is a great opportunity for someone passionate about improving electronics manufacturing and who loves frequent travel to factories in North America and around the world. The ideal candidate is multi‑faceted, technically savvy, organized, and deeply customer‑oriented.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Own a Mission and Deliver on It. In this role, you’ll travel to customer factory sites, primarily in North America, with a specific, company‑critical mission. Common missions may include setting up and integrating physical equipment and accelerating customer “time to value” by hand‑tuning Instrumental algorithms and software. You’ll have support from our global team, but you’ll be the engineer on the ground who will own mission success.
• Build Relationships with Customer and Factory Stakeholders. While onsite, you’ll endeavor to understand and build rapport with the various stakeholders who are critical to Instrumental’s success and pave the way for further adoption. You’ll leverage these relationships to complete your missions quickly and effectively. You’ll cement a strong technical and dependable reputation for yourself and Instrumental at large.
• Leverage Instrumental’s Software to Drive Value. You’ll quickly become an expert in Instrumental’s software and technology, including many non‑customer‑facing functionalities. This will enable you to quickly identify how to get the most performance out of the system – whether that’s by making a physical tweak in the real‑world, adding training labels, or replicating customer tests. You’ll use your engineer’s understanding of how our customer derive value to rapidly achieve results.

What You Have:

• Experience getting things done in electronics factories. 3+ years of professional experience in electronics manufacturing doing engineering or operations – either on the “brand” or EMS side. You understand factory environments, processes, and politics and can leverage that expertise to get things done quickly.
• Love the factory floor more than an office. This role requires frequent travel to customer factory sites, primarily in North America. During peak periods, travel ratio may be as high as 80% of the time – and may include transiting in evenings and on weekends.
• Demonstrated ability to complete your mission. You can share countless stories of mission ownership and completion, where you were able to deliver despite unforeseen or challenging circumstances. You love the idea of applying your diverse engineering and operations skillsets to critical company missions.
• Excellent written and spoken English + ideally Mandarin or Spanish communication. This role will require rapid and effective communication with a variety of global stakeholders, representing Instrumental with our more important customers. We’re looking for someone who enjoys meeting and interacting with people – this is a front‑line role. We will prioritize bilingual English/Mandarin or English/Spanish speakers.

You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description.

Instrumental offers competitive, location‑based compensation. The following is a representative annual base salary range: $132,000‑$144,000.

Job leveling and salary opportunity are evaluated through our interview process—we review each applicant's experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. Instrumental’s benefits include: Health, Vision, Dental, Public Transit/Commuter Plans, and Parental Leave.