Portfolio Jobs

Discover opportunities across our network of portfolio companies

Head of Manufacturing

VULCAN ELEMENTS

VULCAN ELEMENTS

Quality Assurance
Research Triangle Park, Durham, NC, USA
Posted on Jan 23, 2026

Vulcan Elements is manufacturing American rare-earth permanent magnets for a secure, resilient future. With a focus on national security and economic resiliency, we serve critical industries such as defense, aerospace, and automotive powering a high-technology future. Vulcan Elements is building a team of ambitious professionals committed to Mission Focus, Technical Excellence and Transparency.

As the Head of Manufacturing, you will lead the scale-up of Vulcan Elements across operations, manufacturing engineering, quality, and factory functions. This is a high-impact leadership role responsible for executing a production ramp-up within a large 1M+ sqft operation of highly automated advanced manufacturing systems.

Responsibilities

  • • Define the foundational workflows, staffing models, and factory movements (people + material) to enable efficient, safe, 24×7 production.
    • Foster a culture of safety, individual accountability, and technical excellence across all shifts and departments.
    • Lead coordination across EHS, Quality, Engineering, Supply Chain, IT, and Operations to ensure synchronized execution of factory scale up objectives.
    • Establish readiness plans and escalation systems to ensure uninterrupted production & performance.
    • Oversee the development of logistics, material flow, and procurement processes to ensure reliable supply to production lines.
    • Lead structured problem-solving and root cause investigations to sustain high uptime and yield.
    • Manage technical schedules, budgets, and deliverables aligned with company milestones and customer commitments.

Responsibilities and tasks outlined are not exhaustive and may change as determined by the needs of the business

Qualifications

  • 10+ years in manufacturing engineering or operations, ideally within powder metallurgy, advanced materials, rare-earth magnet manufacturing, automotive, battery, or similar high volume manufacturing environments
  • 6+ years demonstrated leadership experience in high volume advanced manufacturing
  • Bachelors Degree in Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related engineering discipline
  • Proven track record scaling complex industrial processes from pilot to production in a leadership position
  • Strong analytical, data-driven problem-solving skills and ability to drive accountability and results under tight timeline

    Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities.