Director of Manufacturing Strategy

Oklo•Santa Clara, CA

1d•$170,000 - $220,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Manufacturing Strategy will define and continuously refine how Oklo converts ambitious product and deployment plans into an executable manufacturing system. Reporting to the Head of Supply Chain, this leader will integrate engineering judgment, supplier-market intelligence, commercial inputs, and strategic analysis to help Oklo achieve aggressive lead-time, cost, quality, and scalability goals. During Oklo's first-of-a-kind (FOAK) build, the Director will work directly with Responsible Engineers and suppliers to develop and improve component-level manufacturing strategies, resolve industrialization challenges, and assess whether supplier processes can produce conforming hardware at the required rate. The role will translate these findings into company-wide make-vs-buy recommendations and manufacturing roadmaps. This is a hybrid technical and commercial strategy role. It requires enough manufacturing depth to evaluate processes, tooling, qualification needs, quality controls, production constraints, and recovery plans, as well as enough commercial fluency to compare market options and support scenario modeling. The role partners closely with Engineering, Procurement, Strategy, Quality, Program Management, and Oklo's internal fabrication leadership. This role develops the strategy for how Oklo will manufacture at scale; it does not establish, manage, or operate factories. When Oklo elects to make a product internally, execution transitions to the internal fabrication organization. Procurement retains ownership of supplier commercial strategy, sourcing, negotiations, and contracting.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in mechanical, manufacturing, industrial, materials, aerospace, nuclear, or a closely related engineering discipline.
10+ years of progressive experience in manufacturing engineering, industrialization, production engineering, supplier manufacturing, operations strategy, or a related hardware-manufacturing field, including meaningful leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated ability to understand and evaluate manufacturing processes, process capability, tooling, qualification, yield, cycle time, throughput, capacity, quality controls, and production risk.
Experience supporting complex, low-volume or FOAK hardware through supplier selection, development, qualification, and transition toward repeatable production.
Experience leading make-vs-buy, manufacturing-footprint, capacity, cost, or industrialization analyses with cross-functional stakeholders.
Ability to combine incomplete technical, commercial, and schedule information into practical recommendations and clearly state assumptions, tradeoffs, risks, and decision points.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to work effectively with Responsible Engineers, suppliers, procurement professionals, executives, and program leaders.
Willingness to travel to supplier sites, manufacturing locations, and Oklo headquarters as business needs require.

Nice To Haves

Master of Business Administration (MBA), master's degree in engineering, or equivalent commercial, finance, corporate strategy, or business-development experience.
Experience in nuclear energy, aerospace, defense, semiconductors, energy systems, advanced industrial equipment, or another highly regulated hardware environment.
Direct experience across both technical manufacturing and commercial or strategic decision-making, including should-cost analysis, total-cost modeling, capacity investment cases, or supplier business assessments.
Experience with fabrication and special processes such as machining, welding, forming, casting, forging, additive manufacturing, heat treatment, coatings, nondestructive examination, or complex assembly.
Experience scaling from prototype or FOAK builds into low-rate initial production and higher-rate manufacturing.
Familiarity with nuclear-quality, export-control, or other regulated supply-chain requirements.

Responsibilities

Own Oklo's enterprise manufacturing strategy, connecting product and deployment plans to executable manufacturing pathways across external suppliers and internal fabrication.
Lead cross-functional make-vs-buy analyses and recommendations using technical feasibility, supplier capability and capacity, lead time, cost, quality, schedule risk, capital requirements, intellectual property, and long-term scalability.
Build decision frameworks and provide supply-market intelligence to the Strategy team so alternative manufacturing scenarios can be modeled with credible assumptions and sensitivities.
Partner with Responsible Engineers during FOAK execution to define supplier manufacturing strategies, review process plans, identify manufacturability risks, and improve the likelihood of delivering conforming hardware on schedule.
Assess suppliers' manufacturing processes, equipment, workforce, quality systems, special-process controls, qualification paths, current loading, surge capacity, and ability to meet Oklo's forecast production rates.
Translate supplier assessments into actionable technical recommendations for Engineering and clear capability guidance for Procurement, while preserving Procurement's ownership of commercial negotiations, contracts, and supplier relationships.
Identify critical manufacturing constraints and fragile supply-chain nodes; develop mitigation options such as alternate processes, supplier development plans, second sources, design changes, phased capacity investments, or selective insourcing.
Support technical vetting and due diligence of potential suppliers alongside Engineering, Quality, and Procurement, including site visits, process reviews, readiness assessments, and production-rate validation.
Develop industrialization and manufacturing-readiness roadmaps that bridge FOAK builds to repeatable production, including learning-curve assumptions, yield and throughput improvement, tooling, automation, qualification, and capacity ramps.
Establish and track manufacturing-strategy metrics and decision milestones related to lead time, cost, quality, capacity, scalability, risk retirement, and make-vs-buy outcomes.
Provide leadership with concise recommendations, trade studies, and portfolio-level views of manufacturing readiness, constraints, and investment choices.
Create reusable standards, playbooks, and lessons learned that strengthen manufacturing planning across programs without adding unnecessary process.