PLM & Configuration Manager

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

22h

About The Position

The PLM & Configuration Lead will define and own Zipline’s configuration management framework, ensuring product integrity from early engineering development through mass production and field operations. The role sets direction for part identification, bill-of-material (BOM) structures, complex configurations, and product-release governance so hardware changes are accurate, traceable, and ready to implement. The role is the authoritative voice on BOM governance and configuration baseline control, working closely with Hardware Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Program Management, and Field Service. It makes foundational decisions about part definitions, configuration and variant management, and the relationships between engineering, manufacturing, and service BOMs. This is a strategic product-data and process role, not a software engineering role. The position translates business needs into functional requirements and partners with the team developing Zipline’s in-house PLM system. Application Software Engineering owns the tooling roadmap, technical architecture, integrations, and development.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in engineering product configuration management, engineering change management, or product lifecycle management within hardware or consumer electronics development.
Experience establishing and governing BOM structures, part-numbering schemas, naming conventions, and revision-control processes across hardware programs.
Deep knowledge of hardware release practices, including lifecycle states, approvals, release packages, CAD and drawing releases, manufacturing documentation, and audit trails.
Experience establishing configuration management practices and making foundational decisions while explaining tradeoffs across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and service.
Strong understanding of complex product structures, variant configuration rules, effectivity controls, and relationships between engineering, manufacturing, and service BOMs.
Experience with PLM systems such as Teamcenter, Agile, Windchill, Arena, or equivalent for configuration baseline management and engineering change workflows.
Track record of defining configuration management business requirements, partnering with software teams on supporting capabilities, and driving cross-functional adoption across large engineering organizations.
Experience integrating configuration management processes with manufacturing execution systems and supply chain planning tools.
Strong cross-functional leadership and clear communication.
Ability to make and carry through decisions with minimal oversight.

Responsibilities

Establish and enforce configuration identification standards, part-numbering schemas, naming conventions, and revision-control practices across engineering and manufacturing teams.
Define multi-level BOM structures and the relationships between engineering BOMs, manufacturing BOMs, and service BOMs.
Establish standards for BOM accuracy, revisions, alternates, effectivity, and traceability across design, manufacturing, and service engineering.
Partner with Supply Chain and Manufacturing to assess how engineering changes affect component availability, supplier qualification, and existing inventory, and define business tools for communicating inventory disposition plans.
Work with the PLM Technical Lead and development team to provide functional requirements, product-data structure definitions, and business logic for custom development.
Lead User Acceptance Testing (UAT), validate delivered capabilities against the original business intent, and lead functional troubleshooting.
Identify and resolve product-data integrity issues across PLM, ERP, and related systems, partnering with Software Engineering when resolution requires tooling changes.
Develop configuration and change-management metrics, audits, and cross-functional improvements to reduce release errors and engineering change cycle time, improve traceability and first-pass build accuracy, and prevent configuration management from becoming a production bottleneck.
Set configuration management standards and guide Change Analysts and engineering teams on complex BOM, release, and product-data issues, driving consistent practices across the organization.
Define a configuration and variant management strategy that supports clear part identification and revision control as Zipline scales.
Establish Zipline’s approach to engineering, manufacturing, and service BOM structures, with clear ownership and traceability between them.
Deliver functional requirements for priority PLM capabilities and validate delivered functionality through UAT in partnership with Software Engineering.