Lab Operations Lead

Swift Solar•San Carlos, CA

10d•$135,000 - $165,000•Onsite

About The Position

As Lab Operations Lead at Swift, your mission is to run Swift's R&D facility so that the people, tools, and workflows on the floor consistently turn high-level technical priorities into productive, safe, informed, and continuous day-to-day execution. A typical day for you starts on the floor. You'll walk the lab multiple times, pull the latest uptime and throughput data, sync with the technician staffing lead on outages and sequencing, and triage tool issues with the equipment team. When a tool goes sideways — and sometimes it will — you'll reshuffle the plan so the highest-priority runs still happen. You're the connective tissue between engineers and technicians: translating priorities into a shared execution plan, surfacing bottlenecks before they become surprises, and making sure critical work carries forward seamlessly across all shifts. The lab is your domain — you set the tone for how it runs. Beyond the day-to-day, you own the preventive maintenance program, calibration procedures, lab safety, SOPs, training records, and inventory. Over your first few months, you'll also stand up and optimize 24/5 operations, build operational dashboards with our data team, and ensure that top-down planning goals reflect the real capacity of our tools and people — not just what looks good on paper. This is an early-stage role at a company that moves fast, and what you build here will define how Swift operates for years to come.

Requirements

4+ years of operations experience in an R&D, pilot line, or production lab (semiconductor, thin film, hardware, or similar).
Preference for hands-on floor work over desk work.
Ability to hold credible technical conversations with tool owners and process engineers about vacuum systems, thin-film deposition tools, and metrology instruments.
Experience managing or closely coordinating a technician team, including balancing workload across people and shifts.
Highly organized and detail-oriented.
Comfortable with data, including being a power user of Google Sheets.
Ability to define useful operational dashboards.
Openness to experimenting with AI tools.
Strong safety mindset.
Willingness to be an active, visible presence on the EHS team.
Deep motivation to make an impact on climate change.
Energized by Swift's mission.

Nice To Haves

Experience in a multi-shift environment (24/5 or 24/7).
Experience designing or improving shift passdown processes.
Experience with ownership of a preventive maintenance program across multiple tool types.
Pareto-driven problem solving and process flow optimization.
Experience identifying yield or throughput bottlenecks quantitatively and driving them to resolution.
Background in perovskite, thin-film solar, PV, or another deposition-heavy hardware domain.
Experience building lab operations from scratch in a scaling environment (e.g., transitioning from exploratory R&D to pilot or 24/5).
Lean Six Sigma (especially Lean).
5S experience.
Inventory management experience.
Prior startup hardware experience.

Responsibilities

Run Swift's R&D facility to ensure productive, safe, informed, and continuous day-to-day execution.
Monitor lab operations, including uptime and throughput data.
Coordinate with technician staffing lead on outages and sequencing.
Triage tool issues with the equipment team.
Reshuffle plans when tools go down to ensure highest-priority runs are completed.
Act as a liaison between engineers and technicians, translating priorities into execution plans.
Identify and address bottlenecks in lab operations.
Ensure seamless continuation of critical work across shifts.
Manage the preventive maintenance program.
Oversee calibration procedures.
Ensure lab safety.
Maintain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
Manage training records.
Oversee inventory.
Stand up and optimize 24/5 operations.
Build operational dashboards with the data team.
Ensure top-down planning goals reflect real capacity of tools and people.