Manufacturing Engineer - Composites

ABOUT MANUFACTURING AT ROCKET LAB:

Rocket Lab’s Manufacturing team are the builders and the doers who work with our advanced machinery across our global manufacturing sites to get our satellites, satellite components, and rockets out the door. They bring the designs of our engineers to life by using advanced manufacturing techniques like 3D printing to create our hardware, and are responsible for delivering our projects and missions on time and on budget to our customers.

WHAT YOU'LL GET TO DO:

The Composite Manufacturing Engineer enables the production team to achieve the required production rates with the right quality.

They are responsible for supporting all aspects of composite production at Rocket Lab. This is delivered by taking ownership of products released to production, removing production blockers, dispositioning non-conformance tickets, performing root-cause analysis, and implementing corrective actions. This role is also responsible for the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of manufacturing processes and procedures relating to composite materials, leveraging their strong working knowledge of both the product and best-practice manufacturing techniques.

Manufacturing Engineers are also expected to work with the production team to develop manufacturing best practices, optimising processes for production, and implementing new processes through prototyping, test, and integration. The role will also work closely with other Engineers, Technicians, and subject matter experts across a range of departments. The primary purpose of the Manufacturing Engineer is to support production activities within a high-growth production environment, ensuring manufacturing principles are practised to a high standard and ensuring stringent launch times can be achieved. This position will support the Composites Production and Manufacturing Engineering teams with their deliverables.

Regular activities of the manufacturing engineering team can be summed up as practical problem solving over a wide variety of systems and situations, so the ability to remain flexible while applying sound, risk-based engineering decision making is critical.

Note: The role requires a background in composite design or manufacturing environments

YOU'LL BRING THESE QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics Engineering, or related
• Experience working as a Manufacturing / Production / Process / Quality Engineer or equivalent
• Hands-on technical experience debugging complex systems within a manufacturing environment
• Working experience with composite materials manufacturing and design techniques including prepreg and wet layup processes
• Able to prioritize risk effectively and make risk/reward trade-off calls by leveraging engineering and production input to mitigate risk to both rocket and business
• Proven ability to deliver with little to no supervision on schedule as an individual or as a member of an integrated team
• Can-do approach and flexibility to thrive around growing teams and processes
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal

THESE QUALIFICATIONS WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE:

• Experience with ERP/PLM Systems - Siemens Team Centre / Infor LN
• Computer Aided Design experience, preferably with Siemens NX
• Knowledge of production quality metrics
• Proven delivery of composite mould and tooling materials, design and implementation
• Can quickly analyse and resolve manufacturing discrepancies and non-conformances
• Ability to lead problem containment and root cause/corrective action investigations and preventative action implementation
• Identify and drive quality-related initiatives and improvements
• Execute product improvements, including qualification and implementation activities
• Develop production procedures and processes and ensure they are accurately and clearly documented to allow repeatable and reliable manufacturing
• Knowledge with composite related material properties including resin systems, ablative materials, and sandwich structures
• Experience with composite structure repair techniques and processes
• Experience in manufacturing and assembly of composite structures into larger assemblies.
• Demonstrated experience with DFMEA, PFMEA methodologies, Fault Tree Analysis, Pareto analysis, root cause and corrective action
• Experience transitioning products from prototype to production
• SPC knowledge and experience applying statistical methods to track process capability and performance
• Computer Aided Design experience, preferably with Siemens NX

If the above is aligned and you would like to know more apply now, all applications are considered and reviewed.