Reframesystems
Head of Operations
2mo ago
USAHead
Senior leadership role to scale manufacturing and field operations for a housing manufacturing company.
About the company
- Reframe Systems is on a mission to build resilient housing for all, at massive scale. To achieve our mission, we need to make high-performance carbon housing more affordable by re-imagining how housing is designed and built. Our volumetric module platform and agile production system drive down cost, delivery time, and embodied carbon for multifamily housing. With our software-driven microfactory in the greater Boston area and a national scaling roadmap underway, we are disrupting assembly line manufacturing for housing production, and we’re backed by leading VC firms in the industrial and construction space.
Responsibilities
- The position is full-time, exempt, and based on-site in the greater Boston area. This is an executive team position with a competitive base salary and meaningful equity participation.
- Reframe Systems is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.
Nice to have
- Background in high-velocity advanced manufacturing, or logistics operations
- Experience with continuous improvement methodologies (Lean, TWI, Six Sigma) applied in a startup or scale-up context
- Has navigated the “first facility to second facility” transition and understands what breaks
- Comfort operating in a company where the product is still evolving and the playbook gets rewritten regularly
Other
- We’re looking for a Head of Operations to join the Reframe executive team and lead the scaling of our manufacturing and field operations. This is a senior leadership role for someone who has launched and scaled complex operations, ideally in environments where physical systems, software tools, and high-velocity teams had to evolve together. You’ll report directly to the CEO and work alongside leaders of Design, Technology, Field Construction, and Revenue.
- This is not a role for someone who wants to manage a steady-state operation. We are building the infrastructure to scale from one factory to many, and we need a leader who has done that before, and who can bring rigor, systems thinking, and a technology-forward mindset to a genuinely novel manufacturing challenge.
- Own the launch and ramp of our next factory, from first article through full production capacity, including facility setup, process design, and staffing
- Drive factory P&L, including throughput targets, labor efficiency, quality metrics, and cost per unit
- Build the management infrastructure and organizational playbook to scale from our current team to a full production workforce, and design the repeatable system for replicating that at future facilities
- Develop and execute a multi-facility scaling strategy, including standards propagation, culture transfer, and knowledge management across sites
- Build the CI function that systematically drives efficiency, waste reduction, and quality improvement across production
- Establish and manage safety programs designed to scale with a large and growing hourly workforce
- Own operational reporting and performance metrics, and partner with our engineering and software teams to ensure production data is actionable in real time
- Own materials procurement and logistics, including inventory management and vendor relationships
- Partner with Finance to build real-time cost accounting by project and work cell, enabling accurate project margin visibility
- Reduce supply chain fragility as throughput increases and new products are introduced
- Recruit, develop, and retain the plant leadership team, including Plant Manager(s), Shift Supervisors, and functional operations leads
- Define the operational org structure for new facilities and own the hiring plan to staff them on an accelerated timeline
- Partner with HR and Recruiting to build the talent pipeline and onboarding infrastructure required for high-volume hourly hiring
- Serve as a strategic sponsor and power user of our factory floor software, design-to-manufacturing pipeline, and operational data systems
- Translate operational requirements into actionable product priorities for our software and engineering teams
- Champion a data-driven operations culture. If it isn’t measured, it isn’t managed
- 10+ years of operations leadership, including at least one large-scale facility launch or ramp in a manufacturing, fulfillment, or industrial environment
- Demonstrated ability to scale teams and operations, not just manage existing ones
- Deep experience operating in technology-enabled environments where software, automation, and physical operations are tightly integrated
- Track record of building operational infrastructure from the ground up, including org design, process development, and management systems
- Strong data orientation, you build systems that generate the metrics you need and make decisions based on them
- Executive presence and communication skills; comfortable in investor-facing and board-level contexts
- Build trust and operating rhythm with key leaders across factory, field, product, and finance; establish cadence for weekly operating reviews and decision-making.
- Assess current-state performance at FAB0 (throughput, labor efficiency, quality, safety, schedule reliability, and cost per unit) and identify the top 3 constraints driving missed targets.
- Align with the CEO and exec team on 3–5 operating metrics that define “winning” for the year, including clear owner/accountability and reporting cadence.
- Produce an initial “Factory(s) scaling plan” outline covering FAB1 launch/ramp, hiring ramp assumptions, and the highest-risk unknowns that require fast resolution.
- Baseline the operational excellence system and quality system: audit current standard work, training, QA/QC gates, defect taxonomy, and corrective action loops; identify the top 3 gaps to close immediately.
- Establish a durable operating system: weekly S&OP / production plan process, daily management rhythms, visual management, and a standardized KPI dashboard used by leadership.
- Deliver measurable performance lift at FAB0 against the primary constraint (e.g., improved cycle time, labor efficiency, quality escape reduction, or schedule adherence), with a repeatable CI mechanism behind it.
- Stand up the FAB1 launch program with a single integrated plan (facility readiness, staffing/hiring, training, commissioning, quality, safety, and supply chain) and clear go/no-go gates.
- Implement the core safety and compliance program that can scale with an hourly workforce (training, audits, incident management, corrective actions).
- Stand up a production-ready Operational Excellence + Quality cadence: tiered daily management, standardized problem solving, and a closed-loop CAPA system that reduces top recurring defects and prevents reoccurrence.
- Successfully launch and ramp FAB1 to stable production with predictable throughput, quality, and labor efficiency, supported by a scalable management structure and training system.
- Build a repeatable “1 → 2 → N” operational playbook that enables replication of facilities, including standards, staffing models, performance management, and knowledge transfer.
- Deliver a step-change improvement in unit economics and operational reliability (cost per unit down, on-time delivery up, quality escapes down), enabling confident customer delivery and multi-site growth.
- Establish world-class supply chain and cost accounting visibility by work cell and project, enabling consistent margin management and rapid decision-making as product and volume evolve.
- Achieve a sustained quality step-change: clear quality standards by work cell, robust in-process checks, and materially fewer escapes/rework, with quality performance reviewed as rigorously as throughput and cost.