Manufacturing Business Partner

Position Summary

The Manufacturing Business Partner serves as the primary interface between Manufacturing and Business Development, ensuring new business opportunities are evaluated against manufacturing capabilities, capacity, cost, schedule, and operational requirements. The role translates customer and business opportunities into executable manufacturing requirements and coordinates with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Quality to develop accurate assumptions, estimates, and execution plans.

The position helps ensure customer commitments can be effectively supported by the manufacturing organization and serves as a trusted partner in identifying, evaluating, winning, and executing new manufacturing opportunities.

Key Responsibilities

Manufacturing & Business Development Interface

Serve as the primary point of contact between Manufacturing and Business Development for new business opportunities.

Partner with Business Development early in the opportunity process to understand customer requirements, quantities, schedules, objectives, and commercial expectations.

Translate opportunities into manufacturing requirements, assumptions, risks, and execution considerations, including capabilities, capacity, constraints, lead times, and operational requirements.

Represent Manufacturing in customer-facing and internal business-development discussions when appropriate and ensure Manufacturing is informed of customer commitments before they become contractual or operational commitments.

Opportunity Evaluation & Proposal Support

Lead or coordinate manufacturing feasibility assessments and develop manufacturing inputs for proposals, including labor, capacity, production rates, lead times, costs, tooling, equipment, facilities, and other operational requirements.

Develop and maintain manufacturing ROMs and cost estimates, clearly communicating assumptions, confidence levels, risks, and execution challenges.

Support production plans and ramp-up strategies while ensuring manufacturing proposals and commitments are realistic and aligned with operational capabilities.

Manufacturing Strategy & Capacity

• Maintain a current understanding of manufacturing capabilities, available capacity, production rates, and key constraints.
• Identify capacity, facility, equipment, labor, and process requirements associated with potential new business and support capacity expansion and resource planning based on the business-development pipeline.
• Identify opportunities to leverage existing capabilities for new customers, products, or programs and communicate capability gaps to leadership.

Opportunity-to-Production Transition

• Support the transition of awarded opportunities from Business Development into Manufacturing, ensuring proposal assumptions are clearly communicated to the operational organization.
• Participate in program and production launch activities to align the original business case with the manufacturing execution plan.
• Track significant changes to scope, quantities, schedules, or customer requirements and help resolve disconnects between customer commitments and manufacturing capabilities.

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Coordinate manufacturing-related inputs from Supply Chain and Quality for new business opportunities.
• Work with Supply Chain to evaluate supplier capacity, sourcing requirements, lead times, localization opportunities, and material availability.
• Work with Quality to understand customer quality requirements, inspection requirements, certifications, traceability, and other manufacturing requirements.
• Facilitate cross-functional reviews when opportunities require significant manufacturing, supply chain, or quality investment.

Continuous Improvement & Business Development Support

• Develop standardized processes, estimating methodologies, assumptions, and reference data for manufacturing opportunity assessments, ROMs, capacity evaluations, and proposal inputs.
• Identify opportunities to improve manufacturing competitiveness through cost reduction, process improvement, localization, automation, sourcing, and capacity optimization.
• Provide Business Development with feedback on market requirements, customer expectations, and opportunities that may influence future manufacturing strategy.
• Bachelor's degree in Manufacturing, Operations, Industrial Engineering, Business, or a related field preferred; equivalent experience may be considered.
• 7+ years of experience in manufacturing, operations, program management, business development support, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, production planning, capacity planning, labor requirements, and manufacturing cost drivers.
• Experience developing manufacturing estimates, ROMs, capacity assessments, or production plans.
• Experience working directly with Business Development, Sales, customers, or commercial teams strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of supply chain and quality considerations within a manufacturing environment.
• Ability to translate customer requirements into practical manufacturing requirements and work effectively across functions without direct authority.
• Strong analytical, communication, organizational, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to operate effectively in a changing environment.
• Experience with government proposals preferred.

Physical Requirements

• Ability to sit, stand, and/or walk for extended periods
• Ability to use hands and fingers for manual dexterity and repetitive tasks
• Ability to bend, stoop, reach, push, pull, and lift as required by the position
• Ability to safely lift, carry, push, or pull objects within the requirements of the position
• Ability to perform the visual, auditory, and communication requirements necessary to perform the essential functions of the position
• Ability to work safely in the physical and environmental conditions applicable to the position

Company Benefits

·Paid Time Off (PTO)

·Paid Holidays

·Parental Leave

·Medical, Dental, Vision Insurance

·Health Savings Account (HSA)

·401(k) with company match

·Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

·Commuter Benefits

·Basic Life Insurance – fully paid by the company for employees and their dependents

·Long-Term Disability Insurance – fully paid by the company

·Voluntary Short-Term Disability Insurance

·Supplemental Life Insurance options

This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive, and the employee may also be asked to perform other reasonably related job duties as assigned by their immediate supervisor as required. All employees may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities from time to time as needed. The AIRO Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer.