Director Supply Chain & Hardware Operations
Job description
Director of Supply Chain & Hardware Operations responsible for taking the company's AI-driven pick-and-place and returns-handling cells from release-ready designs to QA'd units shipped to customers. The role owns contract manufacturing, supplier quality, planning, logistics and hardware cost, reporting to the CEO.
At a glance
- Work mode
- Remote
- Languages
- English – fluent
What you'll do
- Move gripper, cell, cabinet and final assembly to external contract manufacturers and EMS partners, with suppliers building to spec and shipping direct to customers where possible
- Take frozen designs from Product Engineering into repeatable volume production, including ramp plans, build and work instructions and jigs
- Run a first pilot build of grippers outside our own facility within your first 90 days
- Select, negotiate with and manage suppliers, including commercial terms and capacity planning
- Build redundancy for critical single points of failure such as the robot arm and long-lead or sole-source parts
- Own incoming inspection, supplier quality, first article inspection, PPM targets and the manufacturing side of the RMA process
- Build S&OP, forecasting and buffer stock so parts are staged weeks ahead of each deployment
- Reduce supplier lead times and keep demo and fleet hardware available
- Own shipping and import and export across the EU and US
- Own hardware unit cost and bring COGS down over time
- Implement the split between bespoke builds and a standardized product line on the operations side
- Set up the supply chain operating model, KPIs and review cadence for your function
What we're looking for
- 10+ years in supply chain, manufacturing or hardware operations, including several years in a leadership role
- A track record of taking a complex electromechanical product from prototype to hundreds of units per year, with production that kept running after the ramp
- Experience standing up outsourced contract manufacturing, supplier quality, logistics and inventory from scratch in a scaleup or growth-stage company
- Degree in engineering, supply chain, operations or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Hands-on supplier management, including selection, negotiation and supplier quality
- Manufacturing quality, NPI and industrialization experience
- Supply and demand planning and inventory management
- Comfortable installing operating discipline, accountability and KPIs in a fast-moving, resource-constrained environment
- Fluent English and willingness to travel to suppliers and customer sites
Nice to have
- Experience in robotics, warehouse automation, AMRs or autonomous vehicles
- Experience turning demos and pilots into repeatable production deployments
- Experience working with product engineering on design-to-cost and DfM
- German fluency
Benefits
- Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing Series B robotics company
- Flexible PTO and a collaborative, high-ownership culture
- Ownership of our supply chain and manufacturing setup as we scale to hundreds of units a year
Apply
Direct apply at Sereact GmbH
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About Sereact GmbH
We build the intelligence that lets robots sense, reason, and act in the real world
Sereact builds AI-driven pick-and-place and returns-handling cells that combine robot arms, adaptive force-controlled grippers, AI vision and a safety cabinet, all driven by Cortex, a vision-language-action model. The cells run in live customer operations across the EU and US.
Mission
We are on a mission to redefine how physical work gets done
Key facts
- Robotics
- AI-driven pick-and-place and returns-handling cells run in live customer operations across the EU and US
- Scaling from around 50 units a year to several hundred
- Moving production to external contract manufacturers with full quality control at the supplier
- Series B robotics company
What they value
- Curious, bold thinkers
- Collaborative, high-ownership culture