Head of Manufacturing Operations

About the role

Salience Labs is seeking a Head of Manufacturing Operations to lead the building, testing, and qualification of photonic hardware for AI infrastructure. This senior leadership role involves managing internal engineering teams and external manufacturing partners to ensure products meet commercial standards for data center deployment. The successful candidate will oversee operational strategy, quality processes, and yield improvements while collaborating across engineering and commercial functions.

Responsibilities

• Set the direction and priorities for manufacturing operations and align them with company product and commercial goals
• Lead and develop an engineering team, setting clear expectations and accountability
• Manage relationships with external suppliers and manufacturing partners, including performance, escalation and corrective actions
• Oversee packaging, assembly and test activities for photonic hardware
• Ensure appropriate reliability, qualification and quality processes are in place
• Drive improvements in yield, performance and cost
• Work with engineering teams to ensure manufacturability, testability and reliability are considered throughout product development
• Collaborate with product and commercial teams to ensure customer requirements are understood and met
• Investigate and resolve manufacturing and quality issues, including root-cause analysis and corrective action
• Support supplier visits, audits and technical reviews
• Own operational risks, schedules and budgets for the function
• Continuously improve processes, tools and reporting standards
• Communicate technical findings clearly to both specialist and non-specialist stakeholders

Required skills

• Semiconductor manufacturing
• Electronics manufacturing
• Photonics
• Engineering leadership
• Semiconductor devices
• Packaging
• Test reliability
• Quality principles
• Supplier management
• Data analysis
• Problem-solving
• Stakeholder management

Nice to have

• High-volume manufacturing
• OSAT
• Failure analysis
• Root-cause investigation
• Data-centre environments

Qualifications

• Significant industrial experience in semiconductor, photonics or electronics manufacturing
• Experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams

About the Company

Salience Labs is building an industry-defining approach to optical circuit switching for AI infrastructure, engineered for real latency reduction and cost savings.