Head of Production

About Varda

Low Earth orbit is open for business. Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure from inorbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules.

From lifesaving pharmaceuticals to more powerful fiber optics there is a world of products used on Earth today that can only be manufactured in space. Varda is accelerating innovation in the orbital economy by creating both the products and infrastructure needed so space can directly benefit life on Earth. Our mission is to expand the economic bounds of humankind.

Our team is uniquely suited to accomplishing this goal with leadership and staff comprised of veterans from SpaceX Blue Origin major pharmaceutical companies and Silicon Valley. Varda was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov with significant backing from world class investors including Khosla Ventures Lux Capital Founders Fund Caffeinated Capital General Catalyst and Also Capital.

Varda is headquartered in El Segundo California where we have offices and a production facility where our vehicles equipment and materials are built integrated and tested. Varda also has offices in Washington DC and Huntsville AL (coming soon).

Join Varda and work to create a bustling inspace ecosystem.

About This Role

As the Head of Production you will own Vardas ability to meet increasing vehicle production cadence targets. The Head of Production at Varda is responsible for the endtoend production workflow from piece parts to vehicle launch with the key performance metric of cadence. The role will create and execute on the production plans for Vardas evolving vehicles capabilities then monitor report and forecast demands on the facility tooling and personnel. The role will lead the team tasked with iterative improvement in both quality and takt time over each vehicle build from subassemblies through launch. This role will be responsible for hiring talented individuals for the fastest growing organization as Varda scales to meet customer demand. Ultimately the Head of Production will be excited to build space vehicles alongside a growing team!

Responsibilities

• Deliver evolving vehicles on time or early at increasing cadence
• Provide technical direction to improve team and build processes to scale toward increasing build rate
• Lead growing team of technicians and manufacturing engineers including performance management
• Monitor report and forecast production demands for facility tooling and personnel needs
• Assess cost of increasing work cell capabilities and proposing plans to increase internal capabilities
• Weigh production priorities in context of company goals
• Identify and resolve nonconformance issues
• Implement data tracking for production and quality metrics to inform requirements to hit production targets
• Timely build assembly repair and test of components subassemblies and vehicles in a cleanroom environment to hit production targets
• Create maintain and execute production plans
• Assess and hire skill sets needed
• Create and execute training programs
• Proactively coordinate with engineering and supply chain to improve the vehicle and/or schedules
• Review work instructions to make change recommendations when required and identify tooling/training gaps
• Own and improve production environment

Basic Qualifications

• B.S. degree in engineering or 8 years of experience in a final assembly production environment
• 3 years of production management experience
• Teamwork communication (verbal and written) and problem solving in a collaborative environment
• Proven experience working on complex technical programs preferably within aerospace or related industries
• Strong first principles thinking
• Handson experience building complex vehicles
  • Must be physically able to regularly lift 25 lbs.
  • Must be comfortable bending stooping and standing
  • Handson position may require standing for up to 6 hours a day and working directly with hardware on the floor

PreferredSkills and Experience

• Knowledge of aerospace vehicle systems
• Experience with project management of the full lifecycle of a project
• Capability to solve complex problems autonomously as an individual or as a member of an integrated team
• Experience moving teams and processes from development to production
• Ability to read engineering drawings and schematics
• Experience with aerospace hardware development practices (e.g. qualification testing practices cleanliness ESD grounding etc.
• Experience across structures propulsion and/or avionics production
• Prior work in a technical leadership role for a launch vehicle or satellite development effort
• Experience with Unigraphics NX or similar CAD software

Pay Range

• $175000 $223600
• This role is onsitein El Segundo CA
• Leveling and base salary is determined by jobrelated skills education level experience level and job performance
• You will be eligible for longterm incentives in the form of stock options and/or longterm cash awards

• Varda like all employers must ensure that its employees working in the United States are lawfully authorized to work in the U.S. Additionally our employees are exposed to and have access to certain exportcontrolled items. At present some of our technology to which employees have access requires a license to be exported to individuals other than U.S. Persons as defined in U.S. export regulations. Because our employees are provided access to exportcontrolled items our current policy is to only hire U.S. persons who are permitted to have access to our technology without an export license.

  US person means: U.S. citizen U.S. lawful permanent resident or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)3 (i.e. individual admitted to the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum in the U.S.

  Learn more about the ITAR here.

Benefits