Senior Manager, Composite Production at REGENT in North Kingstown, RI

Job description

At REGENT, we’re on a mission to revolutionize regional transportation between coastal cities. We're not just building vehicles, we're creating a new category of transportation: the Seaglider. These groundbreaking wing-in-ground-effect craft travel just above the water’s surface, combining the speed of an airplane with the low operating costs of a boat. Capable of 180 miles at 180 mph on today's battery tech (and up to 400 miles with next-gen batteries), Seagliders will unlock fast, affordable, and sustainable coastal transit for passengers and cargo - connecting cities, islands, and communities like never before. Backed by leading investors and powered by a team of passionate, forward-thinking engineers, builders, and operators, we’re now scaling from a breakthrough prototype to full production - and building the team to make it happen. Role Overview We're looking for a Senior Manager, Composite Production to own the full composite production organization: the engineering, maintenance, and production teams that together turn composite process into finished parts at rate. You'll lead through a management layer of shift leads and supervisors - standing up standard work and quality control that survive shift-to-shift, building a maintenance program that keeps cure and layup equipment running, and growing and training the workforce as we scale - and help take composite production from prototype builds to predictable, production-ready output, in tight partnership with Advanced Engineering. If you're energized by building a production organization from the ground up, developing people at scale, and hands-on manufacturing leadership, you'll be in the right place - and we'd be thrilled to have you on the team! What You'll Do • Own Composite Production Performance End to End: Hold single-point accountability across engineering, maintenance, and production for quality, yield, equipment uptime, and throughput — so the three functions operate as one, unified system. • Lead Through a Management Layer: Build and develop the shift leads and supervisors who run the floor day-to-day, and grow that leadership structure so the organization scales without diluting quality. • Systematize Engineered Fixes into Standard Work: Turn one-off process solutions into trained, auditable standards that every technician on every shift can run — and close the loop back to engineering when a standard isn't holding. • Own Equipment Reliability: Run a preventive maintenance program and uptime tracking for cure, layup, and trim equipment (autoclaves, ovens, presses, trim and cure systems), and prioritize maintenance and engineering resources against production schedule risk. • Build the Workforce and Its Training Pipeline: Stand up structured training paths and certification levels - for example a station-based dojo model and skills matrices - that take a hire from no experience to certified, independent operator. • Run Quality Control at Scale: Put control plans, SPC checks, and non-conformance and corrective-action processes into daily practice across shifts, so quality and process control scale with production rate. • Partner with Advanced Engineering: Work continuously with the Advanced Engineering team to validate process robustness before it reaches the floor, treating each build as a shared outcome rather than a handoff at the end of engineering's work. What You'll Bring • Composite Manufacturing & Organizational Leadership: Extensive experience in composite manufacturing, including leading a multi-disciplinary organization spanning manufacturing engineering, maintenance, and/or production at meaningful scale. • Leadership Through Leads and Supervisors: You've run production through a layer of leadership rather than by directly managing every individual, and you know how to build that layer. • Equipment Uptime & Maintenance Strategy: Demonstrated experience running maintenance and reliability for composite process equipment — autoclaves, ovens, presses, t