Operation Excellence Coordinator
Podium Automation · New York City
Podium Automation is reimagining industrial control panel manufacturing through software-enabled design and automated fabrication. We're building technology to create a new industrial supply chain - reducing lead times for critical electrical equipment from months to days. We've raised over $23M from top-tier investors including Construct Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Transition Ventures, Sunflower Capital, Banter Capital, and SV Angel.
As Operations Excellence Coordinator, you will help shape how work gets done on our production floor and how it gets better. Reporting to the General Manager of Operations (Brooklyn), you’ll own training and standard work for our assembly team. You’ll also drive step-wise improvements to the workflows technicians use every day, applying manufacturing best practices to a fast-moving, high-mix environment.
This role is built for growth. You’ll be developed to think in systems: how stations, material flow, information, and people fit together. You’re expected to question the status quo. When something on the floor isn’t working well, you’ll test a better way, measure the result, and turn what works into the new standard.
What You’ll Do
Standard Work & SOPs
Turn validated improvements into SOPs and work instructions for assembly, wiring, inspection, and material handling, so each gain becomes the new baseline.
Own document control: versioning, review and approval, and retiring obsolete instructions so the floor always works from the current revision.
Capture knowledge from experienced technicians and convert it into visual, step-by-step standard work using photos, annotated diagrams, and short videos.
Implement point-of-use cues such as station signage, visual labels, and Kanban cards so the right information is available at the right place and time.
Support preventive maintenance on production equipment such as our Komax and Perforex systems. This means building operator-level care routines (cleaning, inspection, basic checks) into standard work, tracking PM schedules, and logging downtime and equipment issues for engineering.
Training
Own onboarding and ongoing training for assembly technicians on floor processes and the systems that support them, including our Task Execution System (TES), Odoo, and barcode scanning.
Build and maintain a skills matrix tracking who is trained, signed off, and able to train others on each process.
Verify training through observation and sign-off rather than completion alone, and retrain when processes or tools change.
Serve as the first point of contact when a technician is stuck on how to execute a process, and turn recurring questions into documentation or workflow fixes.
Scaling Standards
Document station layouts, configurations, and standard work in enough detail to be replicated at new sites.
Support process rollout and training as additional sites come online.
Continuous Improvement & Workflow Design
Identify waste, bottlenecks, and failure points in station workflows and the broader build process. Work with the team to design and implement step-wise improvements.
Adapt lean manufacturing best practices to a high-mix, custom-build environment. These include standard work, 5S, visual management, error-proofing (poka-yoke), and point-of-use material presentation.
Lead smaller improvements end to end, and contribute to larger workflow changes alongside the GM and engineering team.
Support experiments to validate improvements with data before rolling them out. Examples include time studies, station layout comparisons, tooling and fixture trials, and ergonomic changes.
Facilitate Kaizen events and root cause analysis (5 Whys, fishbone) for recurring defects, rework, and process breakdowns.
Track and report the measured impact of improvements.
What We’re Looking For
0–3 years of experience in manufacturing, operations, or a related field. We are highly open to strong early-career candidates.
Comfortable on a production floor. Electrical or mechanical assembly experience is a plus.
Exposure to lean or continuous improvement methods through work or coursework, or a strong interest in learning them.
Curiosity about how systems fit together, and a willingness to challenge how things are done today.
A habit of noticing inefficiency, and the drive to fix it.
Clear technical writing: you can turn a complex process into instructions someone follows correctly the first time.
Naturally organized.
Comfortable with spreadsheets and basic data analysis for evaluating experiments.
Self-motivated, with a strong bias toward action.
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