Manufacturing / Production Engineer

Creative Alignments; Boulder (CO); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k)

Flexible / Unlimited PTO

Free Eldora ski pass

Ski pass & powder day mornings

Job summary

Black Swift Technologies in Boulder, Colorado, seeks a Manufacturing Engineer to lead the shift from hand-built aircraft to repeatable production. You will document processes, write work instructions and BOMs, and prepare builds for transfer to partner facilities.

Work with mechanical, electrical, and firmware teams on design-for-manufacturing changes, strengthen inspection and test coverage, and develop jigs and fixtures to reduce cycle time.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, manufacturing, industrial, or aerospace engineering, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• 3+ years of manufacturing, production, or process engineering experience in a hardware environment, aerospace, robotics, or electronics strongly preferred.
• Experience writing work instructions and assembly documentation and managing BOMs under revision control.
• Hands-on comfort across several of: composite fabrication, machining, electronics assembly, cable and harness fabrication, and integrated system test.
• Structured root cause skills for build and quality failures, with familiarity with non-conforming material and corrective action processes.
• Must qualify as a U.S. Person under export control regulations (U.S. citizen, national, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee).
• Preferred: experience transferring production to contract manufacturers, familiarity with PCB assembly and board-level test, or experience with NDAA compliant sourcing and Blue UAS requirements.

Responsibilities

• Create and maintain work instructions, BOMs, assembly procedures, and inspection checklists across airframes, avionics, and payloads
• Partner with mechanical, electrical, and firmware engineers on design for manufacturing changes that move build capacity from prototype to production rates
• Package processes, documentation, and quality requirements so builds can transfer cleanly to partner manufacturing facilities
• Strengthen incoming inspection, in process QC, and end of line test coverage, and drive root cause corrective action with engineering and suppliers
• Design or procure jigs, fixtures, and test equipment that reduce build time and operator dependence
• Track yield, cycle time, and capacity, and prioritize improvement work by impact on delivery

Skills

Manufacturing engineering

Documentation writing

BOM management

Design for manufacturing

Root cause analysis

Export control - U.S. Person

Contract manufacturing transfer

PCB assembly knowledge

NDAA/Blue UAS knowledge

Education

Bachelor's degree in mechanical manufacturing industrial or aerospace engineering or equivalent

Job description

Join Black Swift Technologies and build the production systems behind aircraft that fly into hurricanes, volcanoes, and wildfires to capture data otherwise out of reach, turning hand built prototypes into a repeatable, defense ready manufacturing line.

Black Swift Technologies

Black Swift Technologies builds unmanned aircraft systems for the most demanding flight environments on Earth. Founded in 2011 in Boulder, Colorado, and born out of research flying into tornadic supercell thunderstorms, BST designs its aircraft, avionics, autonomy software, payloads, and ground control systems entirely in house. That level of vertical integration lets a small, senior team field capabilities most organizations only prototype.

At the core of every aircraft is SwiftCore, our flight management system developed from the ground up rather than assembled around an off the shelf autopilot. Owning the entire stack is why our systems survive conditions that ground everyone else, and why our engineers can innovate at any layer of the aircraft.

BST is now scaling from a research driven engineering firm into a production supplier of autonomous aircraft for environmental sensing and defense missions, expanding our platform family with the S3, building toward NDAA compliant sourcing and Blue UAS listing, and growing rapidly with the backing of our strategic partner KrateoSky.

What You Will Do

You'll own the manufacturing engineering behind BST's shift from hand built, engineering led aircraft to repeatable, controlled production. Build knowledge today lives with a small group of senior engineers and a set of working spreadsheets, and your job is to turn that into documented, versioned processes and build packages clean enough to replicate beyond our own shop floor, including at the higher rate production facility our partner KrateoSky is standing up.

Responsibilities:

• Create and maintain work instructions, BOMs, assembly procedures, and inspection checklists across airframes, avionics, and payloads
• Partner with mechanical, electrical, and firmware engineers on design for manufacturing changes that move build capacity from prototype to production rates
• Package processes, documentation, and quality requirements so builds can transfer cleanly to partner manufacturing facilities
• Strengthen incoming inspection, in process QC, and end of line test coverage, and drive root cause corrective action with engineering and suppliers
• Design or procure jigs, fixtures, and test equipment that reduce build time and operator dependence
• Track yield, cycle time, and capacity, and prioritize improvement work by impact on delivery

Who You Are

You're organized and self directed, comfortable being the first dedicated manufacturing engineer on a small team where the role spans documentation, process, tooling, and quality all at once. You've worked hands on across the shop floor, not just from a desk, and you know how to drive a design for manufacturing change through to done without losing sight of schedule.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, manufacturing, industrial, or aerospace engineering, or equivalent hands-on experience
• 3+ years of manufacturing, production, or process engineering experience in a hardware environment, aerospace, robotics, or electronics strongly preferred
• Experience writing work instructions and assembly documentation and managing BOMs under revision control
• Hands-on comfort across several of: composite fabrication, machining, electronics assembly, cable and harness fabrication, and integrated system test
• Structured root cause skills for build and quality failures, with familiarity with non-conforming material and corrective action processes
• Must qualify as a U.S. Person under export control regulations (U.S. citizen, national, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee)
• Preferred: experience transferring production to contract manufacturers, familiarity with PCB assembly and board-level test, or experience with NDAA compliant sourcing and Blue UAS requirements

Benefits

• $90,000 to $120,000k per year base salary, plus a comprehensive benefits package
• 100% paid healthcare benefits
• 401(k)
• Flexible / Unlimited PTO
• Free Eldora ski pass, plus flexible mornings on 6"+ powder days