Director of Supplier Development and Production Acceleration
ACT1 Federal · Arlington · $180,000–$200,000 (stated in the posting)
Position Title: Director of Supplier Development and Production Acceleration
Program: Transformation, Acceleration, and Supplier Capacity Team (TASC)
Category: Funded
Location: Hybrid, Government and supplier locations, as assigned
Schedule: Full Time
Travel: Frequent domestic travel, including supplier-site deployments and Government meetings
Security Clearance: U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government Top Secret security clearance are required. An active Secret or Top-Secret clearance is preferred but is not required to apply. Clearance sponsorship may be available for qualified candidates, subject to contract requirements and Government authorization. Any assignment before clearance approval will be limited to authorized unclassified duties.
Salary: $180,000 - $200,000
Position Overview
ACT1 Federal seeks a Director of Supplier Development and Production Acceleration to lead a team of approximately six to seven Senior Supplier Development and Manufacturing Readiness Engineers supporting Department of the Navy industrial-base initiatives, particularly missile production and critical supplier capacity.
The Director will bring substantial automotive manufacturing, supplier-development, industrialization, and production-launch experience to the challenge of accelerating defense production. This individual will organize and lead concurrent supplier interventions, establish consistent assessment and recovery methods, allocate engineering resources, and ensure improvements translate into sustained delivery of conforming products.
The successful candidate will have personally led difficult supplier recoveries and production ramp-ups before progressing to responsibility for multiple engineers, suppliers, plants, or manufacturing programs. The role requires a leader who can challenge a capacity assessment on the factory floor, coach an engineer through a recovery plan, engage a supplier executive, and explain production risks and decisions to senior Government leaders.
The Director will report to ACT1’s TASC Program Manager and coordinate Government priorities through the established program structure.
Responsibilities
Team Leadership and Resource Deployment
- Lead, supervise, and develop a team of approximately six to seven supplier-development and manufacturing-readiness engineers.
- Translate approved Government priorities into supplier assignments, assessment objectives, recovery activities, and measurable team outcomes.
- Match engineers to suppliers based on commodity expertise, process knowledge, risk, urgency, and availability.
- Establish staffing, travel, coverage, and escalation plans for concurrent supplier interventions.
- Coach engineers on manufacturing diagnosis, supplier engagement, structured problem solving, and verification of results.
- Review team performance and work products; identify capability gaps and recommend additional technical support.
Supplier Portfolio Prioritization
- Work with the TASC Program Manager, supply-chain lead, and Government stakeholders to prioritize suppliers by their effect on required production and delivery outcomes.
- Consider critical-path dependencies, production shortfalls, recovery lead time, substitutability, qualification constraints, and potential capacity benefit.
- Maintain an integrated view of active supplier interventions, resource requirements, risks, milestones, and decisions needed.
- Identify common constraints across suppliers and distinguish local process problems from systemic issues involving demand, technical data, engineering, material, qualification, or funding.
- Recommend when to intensify, redirect, supplement, or conclude an intervention based on evidence and approved priorities.
Technical Direction and Quality Assurance
- Establish consistent supplier-assessment, manufacturing-readiness, and recovery methods for the team.
- Review capacity models and challenge assumptions concerning cycle time, equipment availability, labor, yield, scrap, rework, material flow, and production schedules.
- Ensure assessments distinguish theoretical capacity from demonstrated, sustainable output.
- Guide appropriate use of automotive practices, including APQP, PPAP, PFMEA, control plans, SPC, MSA, run-at-rate, 8D, standardized work, and error proofing.
- Adapt methods to defense program requirements, production volumes, technical complexity, safety, qualification, and configuration controls.
- Conduct site visits and participate directly in the most difficult assessments, supplier recoveries, and executive escalations.
- Ensure technical recommendations are supported by traceable evidence and realistic implementation assumptions.
Recovery Execution and Production Ramp-Up
- Review and integrate supplier recovery plans with clear actions, owners, resources, dependencies, milestones, and objective closure criteria.
- Establish operating reviews that expose stalled actions, emerging risks, and decisions required.
- Support readiness for new-product launches, production transfers, additional shifts, equipment installations, facility expansions, and rate increases.
- Coordinate multidisciplinary support for constraints outside an assigned engineer’s expertise.
- Escalate issues requiring supplier leadership, prime-contractor action, Government decisions, capital investment, alternate sourcing, or engineering approval.
- Ensure recovery activities address the binding constraint and do not simply move bottlenecks downstream.
Investment and Capacity Benefit Assessment
- Work with TASC cost and business-case analysts to compare process changes, staffing, tooling, equipment, sourcing, and facility alternatives.
- Evaluate proposed improvements against implementation time, qualification needs, cost, risk, and expected usable output.
- Identify opportunities to increase production through existing assets before recommending additional capital expenditure.
- Track progress separately through action completion, asset installation, process qualification, capacity demonstration, and sustained delivery improvement.
- Prevent double counting of capacity gains across suppliers or interventions.
- Recommend intervention exit criteria and sustainment checks to reduce recurrence.
Executive Engagement and Program Integration
- Serve as ACT1’s senior supplier-development technical lead for assigned production-acceleration activities.
- Engage supplier executives and prime-contractor manufacturing, engineering, procurement, and quality leaders through authorized channels.
- Provide concise assessments of production risk, recovery status, resource needs, and decision options to the TASC Program Manager and Government stakeholders.
- Integrate supplier recovery milestones and dependencies into program schedules and execution reporting.
- Maintain a portfolio-level risk and issue register with owners, mitigation actions, due dates, and escalation thresholds.
- Prepare executive briefings, technical recommendations, site-visit summaries, and decision-support packages.
- Coordinate with Government program offices and designated engineering, quality, acquisition, and industrial-base organizations.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in industrial, manufacturing, mechanical, systems, or another relevant engineering discipline. An equivalent combination of technical education and substantial manufacturing leadership experience may be considered where permitted by the applicable contract and Government requirements.
- At least 15 years of progressively responsible experience in manufacturing, supplier development, supplier quality, industrialization, program launch, or production operations.
- At least five years leading engineering teams, supplier-development organizations, or manufacturing-improvement teams responsible for multiple concurrent supplier or plant assignments.
- Substantial automotive OEM, Tier 1, or Tier 2 experience, including direct responsibility for supplier recovery, industrialization, production launches, or major rate increases.
- Demonstrated leadership of successful interventions across multiple suppliers, plants, commodities, or manufacturing processes.
- Strong technical knowledge of manufacturing capacity, equipment, tooling, labor, process capability, material flow, quality, and production planning.
- Demonstrated ability to distinguish symptoms from root causes and verify sustained increases in conforming output.
- Strong working knowledge of automotive launch and quality methods, including APQP, PPAP, PFMEA, control plans, SPC, MSA, 8D, Lean manufacturing, standardized work, and error proofing.
- Experience allocating technical resources and prioritizing interventions according to delivery impact, risk, and recovery potential.
- Demonstrated ability to influence supplier executives and lead cross-organizational recovery activities without relying on direct authority over external organizations.
- Experience preparing executive-level assessments, recovery recommendations, and performance briefings.
- Ability to manage competing priorities, extensive travel, and time-sensitive supplier issues.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s degree in engineering, manufacturing, operations management, business administration, or a related field.
- Experience leading a regional or enterprise supplier-development organization, launch team, supplier recovery task force, or manufacturing operations function.
- Experience transferring automotive manufacturing disciplines into aerospace, defense, or another regulated industry.
- Missile, propulsion, aerospace, electronics, or defense production experience.
- Experience across several manufacturing commodities, including precision machining, castings and forgings, composites, electronics, electrical harnesses, electromechanical assemblies, welding, and special processes.
- Lean Six Sigma Black Belt or Master Black Belt, ASQ certification, professional engineering license, or comparable technical credential.
- Experience evaluating capital investments and verifying their operational benefits.
- Experience coordinating with Government program offices, defense prime contractors, or designated technical and quality authorities.
Evidence of Leadership and Delivery Capability
Candidates should be prepared to demonstrate:
- Leadership of a supplier-development team comparable in size and complexity to the proposed six-to-seven-engineer organization.
- A portfolio of supplier recoveries showing how resources were prioritized and results verified.
- A difficult production ramp-up, including the baseline, binding constraints, interventions, setbacks, and sustained outcome.
- A case in which the candidate escalated a structural issue rather than continuing ineffective corrective actions.
- A capital or process investment that delivered measurable capacity or delivery benefit.
- Examples of coaching engineers, improving assessment quality, and establishing repeatable methods across a team.
- Sanitized examples of supplier recovery plans, portfolio dashboards, capacity assessments, and executive decision packages.
Benefits:
- Medical/Dental/Vision Insurance
- ACT1 Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
- Company Paid Life and AD&D Insurance
- Company Paid Short-Term Disability
- Voluntary Long-Term Disability
- Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
- Health Savings Account (HSA)
- 401K with employer match
- Paid Time Off
- Paid Holidays
- Parental Leave
- Military Leave
- Education, Training & Professional Development
- Voluntary Accidental Injury/Critical Illness/Hospital Care
- Voluntary Pet Insurance, Legal Resources, and Identity Protection
Our people-first culture prioritizes the benefits of flexibility and collaboration, whether that happens in person or remotely.
- If this position is listed as remote or hybrid, you’ll periodically work from a ACT1 Federal or client site facility.
- If this position is listed as onsite, you’ll work with colleagues and clients in person, as needed for the specific role.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.