Senior Manager, Composite Production

regent; North Kingstown (RI); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

REGENT in the United States is seeking a Senior Manager, Composite Production to own the full composite production organization, including engineering, maintenance, and production teams, as we move from prototype to production. You will build a management layer, establish standard work, and drive quality, uptime, and throughput across multiple shifts, partnering with Advanced Engineering.

If you are energized by scaling a production workforce and delivering consistent, production-ready output,

Qualifications

• Extensive experience leading a multi-disciplinary composite production organization.
• Proven ability to develop and scale leadership across shifts.
• Experience implementing preventive maintenance and uptime programs.
• Strong understanding of QA, SPC, and production metrics.

Responsibilities

• Own Composite Production End to End across engineering, maintenance, and production.
• Develop and mentor shift leads and supervisors to scale without compromising quality.
• Systematize fixes into standard work and maintain auditable processes.
• Manage preventive maintenance for cure, layup, and trim equipment.
• Build training paths and certification levels for operators.
• Lead quality control and corrective-action processes across shifts.
• Collaborate with Advanced Engineering to validate process robustness.

Skills

Composite manufacturing

Leadership & people

Maintenance strategy

Equipment uptime

Operational scale-up

Process improvement

Tools

MES

MBOM

Job description

At REGENT, we're on a mission to revolutionize regional transportation between coastal cities. We're not just building vehicles, we're creating a new category of transportation: the Seaglider. These groundbreaking wing-in-ground-effect craft travel just above the water's surface, combining the speed of an airplane with the low operating costs of a boat. Capable of 180 miles at 180 mph on today's battery tech (and up to 400 miles with next-gen batteries), Seagliders will unlock fast, affordable, and sustainable coastal transit for passengers and cargo - connecting cities, islands, and communities like never before.

Backed by leading investors and powered by a team of passionate, forward-thinking engineers, builders, and operators, we're now scaling from a breakthrough prototype to full production - and building the team to make it happen.

Role Overview

We're looking for a Senior Manager, Composite Production to own the full composite production organization: the engineering, maintenance, and production teams that together turn composite process into finished parts at rate. You'll lead through a management layer of shift leads and supervisors - standing up standard work and quality control that survive shift-to-shift, building a maintenance program that keeps cure and layup equipment running, and growing and training the workforce as we scale - and help take composite production from prototype builds to predictable, production-ready output, in tight partnership with Advanced Engineering.

If you're energized by building a production organization from the ground up, developing people at scale, and hands‑on manufacturing leadership, you'll be in the right place - and we'd be thrilled to have you on the team!

What You'll Do

• Own Composite Production Performance End to End: Hold single-point accountability across engineering, maintenance, and production for quality, yield, equipment uptime, and throughput - so the three functions operate as one, unified system.
• Lead Through a Management Layer: Build and develop the shift leads and supervisors who run the floor day-to-day, and grow that leadership structure so the organization scales without diluting quality.
• Systematize Engineered Fixes into Standard Work: Turn one-off process solutions into trained, auditable standards that every technician on every shift can run - and close the loop back to engineering when a standard isn't holding.
• Own Equipment Reliability: Run a preventive maintenance program and uptime tracking for cure, layup, and trim equipment (autoclaves, ovens, presses, trim and cure systems), and prioritize maintenance and engineering resources against production schedule risk.
• Build the Workforce and Its Training Pipeline: Stand up structured training paths and certification levels - for example a station-based dojo model and skills matrices - that take a hire from no experience to certified, independent operator.
• Run Quality Control at Scale: Put control plans, SPC checks, and non-conformance and corrective-action processes into daily practice across shifts, so quality and process control scale with production rate.
• Partner with Advanced Engineering: Work continuously with the Advanced Engineering team to validate process robustness before it reaches the floor, treating each build as a shared outcome rather than a handoff at the end of engineering's work.

What You'll Bring

• Composite Manufacturing & Organizational Leadership: Extensive experience in composite manufacturing, including leading a multi‑disciplinary organization spanning manufacturing engineering, maintenance, and/or production at meaningful scale.
• Leadership Through Leads and Supervisors: You've run production through a layer of leadership rather than by directly managing every individual, and you know how to build that layer.
• Equipment Uptime & Maintenance Strategy: Demonstrated experience running maintenance and reliability for composite process equipment - autoclaves, ovens, presses, trim and cure systems.
• Scaling a Workforce Through a Ramp: You've stood up or grown a production workforce - hiring, org design, and skills development - as volume increased.
• Turning Fixes into Sustained Standard Work: You can point to an engineered process fix you converted into standardized, trained, sustained production work across a large team.
• Hands‑On Composite Production Depth: Enough working knowledge of prepreg and wet layup, vacuum bagging, cure, trim, and bonding to direct engineers and audit floor execution - paired with process discipline and variability reduction across a multi‑shift workforce.
• Quality & Production Systems Fluency: Comfort running control plans, SPC, and corrective-action processes at scale, and familiarity with MES / MBOM / routing structures and how floor, maintenance, and engineering data roll up into production metrics.

Bonus: Having led a composite production organization through a prototype-to-rate ramp in aerospace, marine, or automotive; built or scale