Principal Industrialization Lead

At Re:Build, our mission is to ensure the next generation of important products are made, at scale, in America. We are laying the foundation for a better future for our customers, employees, and communities by revitalizing America’s manufacturing base and creating meaningful jobs across the country, including in historically deindustrialized regions.

We operate an advanced, end-to-end manufacturing platform that partners with industrial companies and innovators to take products from first concept to full-scale production in critical verticals including aerospace and defense, electrification, medical, energy and environment, and robotics and automation.

The way we operate is as important as the work we do. It’s guided by The Re:Build Way, 16 principles that shape how we collaborate with each other, partner with our customers and vendors, and contribute to the communities where we operate. (link to The Re:Build Way principles)

Who we are looking for - The Principal Industrialization Lead is New Kensington’s single technical owner for taking new work from design and development into stable, repeatable, high-quality production. This is a highly technical, hands-on leadership role where success comes through deep manufacturing expertise and influence across teams, not through managing a large organization. We’re seeking a seasoned industrialization expert who maintains full visibility into all incoming programs, engages early with originating sites and engineering teams to ensure manufacturability, and proactively identifies and resolves cross-program and site-readiness dependencies before they become conflicts. As New Kensington is intended to be Re:Build’s manufacturing center, this role is critical to ensuring the site can successfully absorb and launch a growing, increasingly complex program load. The ideal candidate is a systems thinker who thrives in ambiguity, builds process where none exists, and brings the technical credibility and accountability needed to earn trust across functions and sites.

What you get to do - As the Principal Industrialization Lead, you’ll own the design-to-production transition for programs entering New Kensington, ensuring manufacturability is designed in rather than discovered in-process. You’ll maintain full, integrated visibility into all incoming programs to replace fragmented, piece-by-piece intake with a single, coordinated view. In this role, you will lead new program introductions (NPI) while driving process development, tooling and fixturing, work instructions, and production readiness across all value streams and drive launch and ramp readiness by bringing new programs to rate, on quality, and on time. You’ll identify and resolve cross-program and site-readiness dependencies across concurrent programs and serve as the early technical voice and point of contact with originating sites, engineers, and corporate stakeholders in upstream industrialization decisions. Partnering closely with manufacturing engineering, quality, and operations, you’ll embed standards and requirements, establish and continuously improve the industrialization process, tools, and metrics to create a scalable, repeatable model, and assess and communicate program readiness risk, giving leadership clear, early visibility into gaps and mitigation plans.

What you bring to the team - You bring a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience), along with 15+ years of progressive experience in manufacturing engineering, industrialization, NPI, or production operations, including new program launch and ramp. You have demonstrated success owning the transition of products from development into full-rate production, with deep, hands-on knowledge of manufacturing processes, tooling/fixturing, work-instruction development, and production readiness. You’ve proven your ability to lead multiple concurrent, technically diverse programs simultaneously, and you bring strong cross-functional leadership and influence skills, including with teams and stakeholders outside your direct authority, paired with excellent communication skills that allow you to represent the site to internal and external stakeholders. You’re a proactive problem-solver who surfaces and resolves issues before they reach the floor, and you lead with ownership, accountability, and a spirit of constructive partnership across functions and sites. Ideally, you also bring experience across diverse product types and production volumes (low-volume/high-mix through higher-volume programs), high-volume/high-mix engineered manufacturing, experience linking site-readiness and facilities planning (including power, infrastructure, and capacity) to program launch, Lean and continuous improvement experience, and a background in multi-site manufacturing organizations. This role requires willingness to travel domestically 10%-25%, depending on business needs., Aerospace and Defense, Automation, Communication Skills, Concurrency, Concurrent Programming Language Family, Continuous Improvement, Cross-Functional, Facilities Planning, Leadership, Lean Manufacturing, Machine Tool, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Engineering, Manufacturing/Industrial Processes, Metrics, Organizational Development/Management, Physical Demands, Problem Solving Skills, Process Development, Process Improvement, Product/Service Launch, Production Volume, Program Evaluation, Risk, Robotics, Time Management, Tool and Die Manufacturing, Willing to Travel