Lead Manufacturing Engineer

Wanna join the adventure? Loft Orbital is looking for a Manufacturing Engineering Lead to help scale the way we build spacecraft. This is a hands-on, player-coach role combining technical leadership with direct Manufacturing Engineering execution. You’ll spend approximately half of your time providing technical direction, prioritizing work, and mentoring Manufacturing Engineers, while remaining deeply involved in the day-to-day engineering required to build, troubleshoot, and improve our spacecraft production processes. You’ll work directly on the production floor and partner closely with AIT, Design Engineering, Production Planning, Supply Chain, and Quality to translate spacecraft designs into robust, repeatable manufacturing processes. From developing work instructions and tooling to resolving production issues and improving manufacturability, you’ll personally own engineering work while helping the broader team operate effectively and scale. What Success Looks Like: You’ll be successful in this role by being equally comfortable leading the team and doing the work yourself. You’ll help Manufacturing Engineers prioritize and solve difficult problems while personally developing processes, supporting technicians, troubleshooting production issues, and driving spacecraft builds forward. Over time, your work will help turn spacecraft designs into increasingly repeatable, scalable, and production-ready manufacturing processes, enabling Loft to increase production capacity without compromising the quality and reliability required for flight hardware.