Senior Manufacturing Automation Engineer

Job description

**Company** Gantri is building the next generation of digital manufacturing for design-driven products. We operate one of the world’s largest production 3D printing farms for consumer lighting and are transforming a highly manual manufacturing process into a scalable, process-driven advanced manufacturing platform. Our factory combines additive manufacturing, advanced finishing, process engineering, automation, and software-driven operations. **Our next challenge is automation.** Over the next several years, we are investing heavily in automation and robotics to fundamentally change how our factory operates—reducing manual labor, increasing throughput, improving consistency, and building the manufacturing infrastructure required to scale. We are looking for a senior engineer to help lead that transformation from the factory floor. **Role** We are looking for a **Senior Manufacturing Automation Engineer** to identify, design, specify, integrate, and scale automation and robotic systems across Gantri's production environment. This is not a role where you inherit an established automated factory and maintain existing equipment. **You will help build the automation layer of the factory from the ground up.** You will identify opportunities where robotics, automated material handling, machine vision, equipment, and other manufacturing technologies can replace or augment manual processes. You'll work from the factory floor to understand the process, develop the technical requirements, evaluate potential solutions, work with equipment vendors and integrators, install and commission systems, train operators and technicians, and ultimately make sure the automation delivers measurable production results. You will also own the manufacturing process improvements necessary to make automation successful. That means understanding the process before automating it, simplifying workflows, defining requirements and acceptance criteria, solving integration problems, and continuously improving systems once they are in production. **We don't need someone who simply recommends automation. We need someone who can make it happen.** ### What You'll Own ### **Factory Automation & Robotics** - Identify high-value opportunities to automate manual production processes across printing, finishing, inspection, material handling, and fulfillment - Evaluate processes for automation readiness and determine where automation will meaningfully improve labor efficiency, throughput, quality, or safety - Develop technical requirements, system specifications, layouts, and acceptance criteria for new automation equipment - Evaluate and select robotics, conveyors, machine vision, material handling, and other production technologies - Work directly with automation vendors, integrators, and equipment suppliers from concept through installation and commissioning - Lead factory acceptance testing and site acceptance testing to ensure systems meet technical and production requirements - Troubleshoot integration and production issues and drive vendors toward resolution - Establish standards and documentation for automation systems so they can be maintained and scaled ### **Automation Implementation** - Take automation projects from initial concept through production deployment - Coordinate equipment installation, commissioning, process validation, and production ramp - Work directly with operators, technicians, manufacturing engineers, and vendors on the factory floor - Develop SOPs, work instructions, training materials, and maintenance requirements for new automated systems - Measure automation performance against defined targets for throughput, quality, uptime, labor, and safety - Identify and eliminate failure modes that prevent automated equipment from operating reliably in production - Build a roadmap for scaling successful automation solutions across the factory ### **Manufacturing Process Engineering** - Understand existing manufacturing processes deeply enough to determine what should—and should not—be automated - Redesign processes and workflows to enable effective automation - Lead root cause analysis when automated systems or production processes fail - Run structured experiments and trials to validate process and equipment changes - Develop process controls and standards that ensure improvements persist after implementation - Analyze production data to validate that automation is delivering the expected results ### **Production Systems & Data** - Partner with Gantri's software and manufacturing teams to connect automated equipment to production systems - Translate physical factory workflows into clear equipment logic, requirements, edge cases, and acceptance criteria - Establish data collection and monitoring requirements for automated equipment - Use production data to identify bottlenecks, equipment failures, and opportunities for further automation - Build simple tracking and reporting to measure automation performance and ROI ### **Technical Leadership** - Establish the technical standard for manufacturing automation at Gantri - Help define the factory's long-term automation architecture and roadmap - Evaluate emerging robotics and manufacturing technologies for potential application - Help prioritize automation investments based on production impact, technical feasibility, and cost - Raise the technical capabilities of engineers and technicians working alongside you - Build repeatable approaches for taking automation projects from concept to production ### What We're Looking For: Above all, we're looking for someone who has **actually put automation into a factory.** You should be comfortable standing on a production floor, looking at a manual process, and figuring out how to turn it into a reliable automated system. You don't need to have automated 3D printing before, but you need to understand manufacturing equipment, robotics, production processes, and what it takes to get an automated system working reliably in the real world. **Beyond that, we're looking for:** - 5–10+ years of hands-on experience in **manufacturing automation, robotics, controls, manufacturing engineering, or a closely related discipline** - Proven experience taking **automation or robotic equipment from concept/specification through installation, commissioning, and production** - Experience working directly with **robotics, automation equipment, machine vision, conveyors, material handling, or other production automation technologies** - Experience managing automation vendors, system integrators, and equipment suppliers - Strong understanding of manufacturing processes and factory-floor operations - Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot ambiguous equipment and production problems - Experience defining technical requirements, evaluating equipment, and conducting FAT/SAT or equivalent validation - Strong project ownership—you can take an automation project from problem definition through production deployment without needing someone else to drive it - Strong factory-floor execution mindset—you would rather observe a process in person than guess from a desk - Comfort working with production data and using it to validate equipment and process performance - Clear, usable written communication: equipment specifications, SOPs, test plans, commissioning documentation, and training materials - Experience working in innovative, startup, labor-intensive, and/or rapidly scaling manufacturing environments ### Nice to Have - PLC / controls experience - Experience with FANUC, ABB, KUKA, Universal Robots, or other industrial/collaborative robots - Machine vision and automated inspection - SCADA, MES, or manufacturing data systems - Automated material handling / AGVs / AMRs - Additive manufacturing / 3D printing - Finishing, coatings, or cosmetic manufacturing - CAD proficiency - Experience designing for or implementing lights-out / highly automated manufacturing - Experience building automation programs in a factory from 0→1 ### Why Gantri - Join a company reimagining manufacturing and empowering the next generation of designers and design brands. - Help build the automation systems that will fundamentally change how a large-scale digital manufacturing operation runs. - Work directly on the factory floor with a small, highly technical team. - Have significant ownership over automation strategy, equipment selection, and implementation. - Be part of a high-impact, design-driven organization creating a new industry. ### Benefits - Competitive salary and equity - Medical, dental and vision insurance - 401k - Paid vacation days and paid holidays - Access to 3D printers for your personal projects - Monthly team lunches - And much more ### Why This Role Matters Gantri has already built a manufacturing operation capable of producing at significant scale. **The next stage is fundamentally different: we need to make that operation dramatically more automated.** We have a large opportunity to replace manual, labor-intensive processes with robotics, automated equipment, machine vision, and smarter material handling. But buying equipment isn't the hard part. The hard part is understanding the process, designing the right solution, integrating it into production, making it reliable, and getting the factory to actually use it. **This person will be one of the people responsible for making that transformation happen.** If you have built automation systems that actually run in production—and you want to do it again at a company where you can have enormous influence over the factory—we'd love to talk. With your application, tell us about the **most meaningful automation or robotics system you've implemented in a production environment**: what problem were you solving, what did you personally own, what went wrong, and what did you do to get it successfully into production?