Prototype-to-Production Manager
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Rancho Dominguez, CA
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 8+ years
- Category
- Manufacturing
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Experience: 8+ years of progressive leadership experience in manufacturing, industrial engineering, operations, NPI, or product realization, ideally in electromechanical hardware.
- Organizational Leadership: Demonstrated success owning the transition from development builds to pilot production, low-volume or scaled manufacturing, with responsibility for planning, risk, and cross
- Systems Builder: Proven ability to build or formalize operating systems, processes, and governance from the ground up in environments that are scaling quickly or moving from prototype toward productio
- Technical Depth: Strong command of DFM, DFA, process validation, PFMEA, production line design, test strategy, and manufacturing tradeoff decision-making.
- Supply Chain and Commercial Acumen: Strong grasp of supplier qualification, sourcing strategy, cost structure, negotiations, and operational planning.
Nice to have
- Experience in automotive, aerospace, robotics, autonomous systems, energy, or other advanced hardware sectors where design-to-production transitions are complex and high stakes.
- Familiarity with quality and regulated manufacturing environments, including standards such as ISO 9001, AS9100, or IATF 16949.
- Familiarity with Lean Six Sigma principles, with a specific focus on value stream mapping, root cause analysis (e.g., 5 Whys), and eliminating process waste
- Experience working in high-mix, low-volume settings and building the bridge from engineering agility to operational discipline.
- Comfort operating as a senior individual leader today, while building toward broader organizational leadership responsibilities over time.
Full description
About the role
Motivo is seeking a Prototype-to-Production Manager to lead and scale our newly formalized “Launch” division. At Motivo, “Launch” isn’t about closing the gap between mankind and the moon, it's about closing the gap between prototypes and production. This leader will sit at the critical intersection of engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, and client delivery, ensuring that manufacturability, operational readiness, and unit economics are built into product decisions early rather than solved late. The role is intentionally scoped with a clear path to broader independence and ownership as the capability matures.
What you’ll do
As the Prototype-to-Production Manager, you are a builder-leader with expertise to architect and execute the operating model for Launch - balancing technical ambition, manufacturing reality, speed, flexibility, and cost to create a scalable path from prototype to production. Depending on the product and client, these initial builds may be in quantities of dozens of units for large complex builds (like an electric tractor) or into the thousands for smaller devices (like a computer vision system for industrial robots).
- Launch Operations Leadership: Lead a matrixed team spanning manufacturing, engineering, sourcing, fabrication, and program execution to ensure products are designed with manufacturability, quality, and production readiness in mind from the outset.
- Minimum Viable Line (MVL) Strategy: Define, deploy, and continuously improve Motivo’s Minimum Viable Line approach; a manual-first, right-sized production system that enables low-rate initial production, process learning, and repeatable output before scale capital is committed for high-volume scale manufacturing.
- Building Production Readiness into the Design Process: Establish review gates, pilot build manufacturing objectives, and production handoff standards that move programs from concept validation to reliable execution.
- Product Realization Oversight: Serve as a senior decision-maker when technical requirements and scalable manufacturing realities conflict - driving pragmatic tradeoff decisions that protect product intent while enabling production success.
- Proposal and Opportunity Assessment: Partner at the proposal stage to evaluate whether a client program requires design-only support or an integrated Launch approach - shaping scope, risk posture, and commercial strategy. Develop and improve batch-build and production readiness cost estimation models and rules of thumb.
- Supply Chain Architecture: Expand a resilient supply base and sourcing model that supports prototyping, pilot builds, and low-volume production, including vendor qualification, make-buy decisions, lead-time strategy, and commercial negotiation.
- Operational Systems Roadmap: Define the roadmap for fit-for-purpose systems and tools - including spreadsheets where appropriate, and over time right-sized ERP, PLM, PDM, MES, or related systems - to support Launch maturity without introducing unnecessary overhead too early.