Staff Product Operations Manager

About the role

This role is responsible for securing production continuity, scaling manufacturing capacity to meet dynamic product demand, and driving operational excellence across Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies' hardware ecosystem. Key responsibilities include proactive material risk mitigation, field failure triage workflows, and design refresh activities with global partners.

Responsibilities

• Create portfolio of engineering service providers to support post-ramp design, validation, failure analysis, and other critical engineering functions
• Own production continuity planning, including capacity modeling, ramp readiness, and long-term supply planning with internal teams and external CMs
• Lead build readiness for engineering, pilot, and mass-production phases while ensuring operational requirements are met across hardware, software, and system teams
• Proactively identify and mitigate material shortages, EOL components, and single-sourced risk items via strategic planning, qualification of alternates, and cross-functional collaboration
• Partner with Engineering, Sourcing, and Suppliers to manage component lifecycle health and initiate design refresh actions as needed
• Drive RMA workflows with CMs and suppliers, ensuring timely triage, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and preventative measures
• Partner with Quality, Reliability, and Design Engineering to differentiate between design, process, and component failures and ensure efficient ownership
• Lead post-ramp change management efforts for design, quality, and process issue resolution with Quality and Design Engineering teams
• Lead cross-functional issue resolution to mitigate risks and remove roadblocks for CM readiness

Qualifications

• Minimum of 7+ years of experience in New Product Introduction, Manufacturing Operations, Supply Chain Management, and/or Operations Engineering
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering
• Demonstrated experience in component lifecycle management, material risk mitigation, and EOL transition planning
• Experience driving RMA triage, failure analysis, and design refresh processes with engineering and supplier partners
• Experience with managing engineering service partners and/or JDM partners
• Exceptional cross-functional collaboration skills; able to influence without authority and build strong relationships across organizations
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities; data-driven decision-making and comfort navigating ambiguity
• Ability to travel as needed to CM sites internationally
• Strong communication skills in technical and nontechnical domains
• Outstanding collaboration and relationship-building capabilities within and across organizations
• Data-driven, proactive, and tenacious; energized by ambiguity and passionate about cross-functional problem solving