Head of Manufacturing

Head of Manufacturing

Designation: VP/SVP

Reports to: Co-founder & COO

Level: Leadership

We are a Physical AI company building AI-powered sorting grading and packing machines for

fresh produce deployed across India and international markets (fruit packers quick-commerce

retailers

and international channel partners). Were scaling from build-to-order partner-led

manufacturing

toward a repeatable quality-certified production system that can hold up to global fruit-packer

and

retail-automation standards.

Were looking for a Head of Manufacturing to own the full manufacturing function

internal build

capability our external manufacturing partner network and the safety/quality discipline that lets

us

deploy machines confidently anywhere in the world.

What Youll Own

Plant/system-level problem-solving: Trace defects yield loss and downtime across our full

commodity/machine-type portfolio (Sort Pack tray-packing robots) back to shared root causes

in material flow information flow or supplier quality

and fix them at the source not just on

the machine in front of you.

The manufacturing roadmap: Decide which lines machine types and quality investments are

worth building this quarter and which arent. Own the build-vs-partner call for each machine

type and geography.

Safety and quality as a system not a checklist: Own plant-level QA/QC audit cadence

stop-the-line authority and defect-recurrence prevention across shifts and machine lines

to

the standard our international fruit-packer and retail customers expect not just domestic

compliance minimums.

Vendor ecosystem maturity: Move our manufacturing partners from transactional (reliable

delivery on committed orders) toward genuine capability partners and eventually toward a

dual-sourced resilient network so no single vendor or component delay can stall a customer

deployment.

Capability building: Install standard work training pathways and problem-solving methodology

so the shop floor gets better without you in the room.

Culture: Build overall safety as the cultural default with the psychological safety to stop the line

without fear and make near-miss/defect reporting blameless

so problem-solving becomes a

daily habit across shifts rather than something enforced from the top.

Working capital discipline: Partner with finance/ops on milestone-based procurement and

vendor payment structuring (advance / delivery / post-installation) to reduce blocked cash per

unit.

What Good Looks Like (Experience Needed in priority)

Execution: Thrives in ambiguity with high agency

manufacturing environment.

gets things done in a fast-scaling

Leadership style: A flexible outcome-oriented leadership style adapting the approach to the

problem rather than running a fixed playbook.

Development & engagement: People want to work for you and you actively build your teams

capability and engagement.

capability and engagement.

Team building: A track record of building manufacturing teams at scale.

Safety system implementation: Your countermeasures hold via standard work and poka-yoke

not because someones watching.

Vendor management: Vendors treat Intello as a partner worth prioritizing not just another PO.

Process improvement: Handed

yield is down 8% on the Sort line

or

the Q-Com rollout needs

150200 units by 2028

you run it end-to-end without hand-holding.

Shop-floor behavior: Near-miss and defect reporting on your floor is blameless; people flag

problems instead of hiding them.

Quality management: You can look a European fruit-packers or a Reliance/BigBasket-scale

retailers quality audit in the eye without flinching.

What You Bring

10

years in manufacturing engineering/operations with at least 35 years owning plant-level or

multi-line scope (not just machine-level fixes).

Track record building or scaling a vendor/supplier network

ideally in precision machinery

industrial automation or electromechanical assembly.

Direct experience with safety/quality systems (root-cause analysis poka-yoke audit cadence) at

a level that satisfies export-quality or international customer standards.

Comfort operating in a startup environment: build-to-order variability partner-led

manufacturing and capital-constrained scaling

not a mature single-site mass-production

setup.

Bonus: exposure to food-tech/agri-tech hardware sorting/grading/vision-based machinery or

Bonus: exposure to food-tech/agri-tech hardware sorting/grading/vision-based machinery or

cold-chain/produce industry.

Why This Role Matters Now

we are moving from proving the technology to proving it can be built and deployed at scale

India

SaaS fleet expansion India Capex build-to-order lines

150200 Q-Com units through 2028 and

international partner-led deployments. Manufacturing quality and vendor reliability are now the

constraint on growth not the AI. This role sets that foundation