Senior Principal Engineer, Manufacturing Process & Quality (Infrastructure Hardware)

Working at SambaNova

SambaNova is changing the world of AI through revolutionary solutions including hardware acceleration for Machine Learning applications. This role is key to achieve on-time and on-quality delivery of the infrastructure hardware that is custom designed to power the AI-enabled hardware manufactured by our partners. 

As a Senior Principal Manufacturing Quality Engineer, you will be working with supplier partners to successfully deliver new and released products at the right cost, schedule, and quality targets. You will collaborate with our ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers) and CMs (Contract Manufacturers) to ensure that production design, workflow, and assembly methods maximize operational efficiency based on current supplier capability. In this role, you will lead manufacturing process improvement to ensure sufficient capacity to meet our demand. This position requires working in close collaboration with Hardware Design Engineering, Strategic Sourcing, and Program Management.

Responsibilities 

• Lead manufacturing activities for new product development releases and production volumes to meet cost, schedule, and quality targets for L6 through L10/L12 rack assembly
• Work with worldwide manufacturing partners to communicate process workflow and any unique assembly methods
• Support cross-functional initiatives to drive cost, schedule, and manufacturing capacity improvements
• Collaborate with internal and supplier partners to innovate quality improvements to manufacturing and quality processes for achieving higher yield and throughput
• Participate in design review with the development team - Design for Manufacturing (DFM)
• Support commodity managers to strategically source parts matched with supplier competencies by reviewing and assessing supplier manufacturing qualities and quality systems
• Provide supplier selection (RFI, RFP, RFQ, SOW) inputs and recommendations
• Qualify new suppliers and reevaluate existing supplier base by performing audits
• Lead the nonconformity resolution process with the suppliers in case of escalated quality or technical issues and ensure the effective root-cause analysis and the countermeasure implementation by the suppliers
• Monitor and consolidate the supplier delivery and quality KPI’s, the critical non-conformities escalated from the factories
• Identify the top concern suppliers within the region or specific category
• Manage and communicate manufacturing activities within a collaborative cross-functional environment, communicating risk and recovery activities when necessary
• Drive manufacturing continuous process improvement

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent
• Minimum ten (10) years of experience with manufacturing products and process development for large-scale, complex infrastructure hardware

Additional Required Qualifications

• Experience with international supply chain and contract manufacturing qualities
• Demonstrated manufacturing leadership and project management experience, including lean and six-sigma practices
• Experience in product design, fabrication processes, tooling and production equipment, and quality control standards
• Ability to communicate effectively with cross-functional teams inside and outside the organization including external CM’s (Contract Manufacturers) in global regions
• Entrepreneurial mindset with the capability to negotiate and handle difficult situations
• Ability to work under pressure and on fixed timescales
• Ability and willingness to travel approximately 25% domestically and internationally
• Strong manufacturing skills in a high-tech, dynamic growth industry
• Focus on Quality: Experience driving work results with a quality focus on actions and results
• Decision Making & Analysis: Experience making sound decisions based upon a mixture of data-driven analysis, expertise, experience, and judgment; ability to collect relevant information, seek input from others, and identify connections and/or root causes of problems
• Continual Improvement: Experience displaying a consistent orientation toward producing the highest quality product
• Excellence in driving FACA (Failure Analysis and Corrective Actions) with CMs and ODMs using systematic root cause analysis process
• Teamwork: Experience working cooperatively with others to accomplish team goals and organizational objectives
• Communications: Proven ability to exchange thoughts, feelings, and information effectively
• Encourage and Manage Innovation: Experience mining the creative ideas of others; nurturing and managing the ideas that may improve processes, systems, products, and services

Preferred Qualifications

• In-depth understanding of DFM in a hyperscale AI hardware infrastructure manufacturing with ODMs and CMs
• Proficient in AI inference and training hardware manufacturing quality
• Experienced in manufacturing quality of datacenter hardware

Annual Salary Range and Level

The base salary for this position ranges from $165,000/year up to $190,000/year. This range is based on role, level, and location and reflects the salary target for new hires in the US. Individual pay within the range will depend on a number of factors, including a candidate’s job-related qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location.

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