Head, Manufacturing

About Canada Rocket Company

About Canada Rocket Company

Canada Rocket Company is developing Canada's first medium-lift launch vehicle.

We are a team of veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, ArianeGroup, Pangea Propulsion, Tesla, MDA, and more, bringing over a century of combined launch and space systems experience back to Canada.

Our mission is to provide reliable, independent access to space for Canada and its allies in a rapidly expanding global market.

Our approach is defined by pragmatic engineering:

• We utilize a 725 kN engine that scales medium-lift via engine clustering.
• We lean on simple, proven technologies to reach orbit faster, avoiding the pitfalls of complex or novel designs.
• We test early and often, catching problems on the bench instead of at the pad.

Backed by over $20M in funding secured within our first four months, including the largest all-Canadian seed round in the sector and an $8.3M Department of National Defence grant, we are moving with the speed and institutional backing required to meet Canada’s orbital launch needs.

About the role

Canada Rocket Company is building a sovereign launch capability for Canada. We're looking for a Head of Manufacturing to champion the fit out, deployment, qualification, control, and industrialization fabrication processes that turn our vehicle designs into reliable, flight-ready hardware.

Alongside growing the manufacturing and process teams, you will work across structures, propulsion, fluids, integration teams, and executive teams to define and deploy CRC’s manufacturing approach. You will drive the development of the machine that builds the machine, further solidifying supply base partnerships and deploying in-house capability that allows us to build our vehicles at rate. You will additionally guide the selection and qualification of materials, fabrication methods, and process controls, leading the resolution of real-world manufacturing challenges.

What you'll do

• Define and own CRC's overall manufacturing and process strategy spanning material selection philosophy, fabrication method selection, in-house vs. outsourced capability, and industrialization roadmap
• Decide where CRC builds in-house capability versus deploys and manages supply-base partnerships, and drive the capital and hiring plans needed to support that
• Set the standards and gates for material and process qualification, and hold the team and suppliers accountable to them
• Own the make-vs-buy and supplier strategy for critical raw materials, forgings, and fabricated components; guide supplier selection, qualification, and long-term relationship management in partnership with supply chain and operations
• Set direction for manufacturing documentation systems (specs, travelers, work instructions, build sequences) and ensure the team builds and maintains them to a consistent, auditable standard
• Establish CRC's approach to non-conformances, rework, process escapes, and failure analysis; building the investigation process and escalation structure, and personally leading resolution of the highest-severity issues
• Represent manufacturing and materials in technical reviews, trade studies, program planning, and executive-level discussions on hardware risk, schedule, and production scaling
• Work with structural and mechanical engineers to define and execute the material and manufacturing engineering approach for launch-vehicle hardware, spanning material selection, process development, fabrication planning, producibility, industrialization, and build support
• Define, develop, optimize, and control fabrication processes for hardware
• Drive design-for-manufacture and design-for-assembly reviews with engineering teams
• Partner closely with design, structures, propulsion, fluids, and integration teams to ensure hardware concepts are aligned with real process capability, source availability, and production constraints. Ensure Production capability remains ahead of design need.
• Contribute to technical reviews, trade studies, and development planning related to materials, manufacturing methods, production scaling, and hardware risk reduction

Qualifications

Required

• Experience in leading or building manufacturing engineering, materials engineering, or process engineering function for aerospace hardware or similarly demanding environments.
• Experience establishing and commissioning tooling and advanced manufacturing capability.
• Deep working knowledge of metallic material systems and fabrication processes. (machining, welding, forming, joining, heat treatment), and experience utilizing that knowledge to make decisions impacting performance, manufacturability, durability, and cost.
• Experience developing, utilizing, supporting, or optimizing fabrication processes for hardware
• Strong understanding of the interaction between materials and manufacturing methods, especially where fabrication route directly affects strength, fatigue performance, distortion, residual stress, crack initiation, dimensional control, or inspectability.
• Experience creating and managing manufacturing documentation, process flows, work instructions, build plans, or fabrication sequences.
• Strong engineering fundamentals related to material behavior, manufacturing process capability, producibility, and practical hardware realization.
• Strong cross-functional leadership; able to align design engineering, production, operations, suppliers, and executive stakeholders being a manufacturing strategy.
• Comfort operating with significant ambiguity and limited infrastructure
• Strong communication and technical judgment, with the ability to make sound decisions that balance performance, manufacturability, schedule, scalability, and cost

Preferred

• Direct experience with launch vehicle, spacecraft, propulsion, pressure vessel, tank, thrust structure, manifold, or other high-performance aerospace hardware.
• Experience standing up or scaling a manufacturing/materials organization from early stage through rate production
• Experience with both additive manufacturing processes and traditional machining and joining methods
• Experience with source qualification and supplier development for metallic raw material and fabrication processes.
• Familiarity with NDT/NDE methods relevant to metallic and composite hardware
• Familiarity with AS9100, NASA, ECSS, or similar aerospace process and manufacturing environments.
• Bachelor's or advanced degree in materials engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, aerospace engineering, or a related field.

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