Manufacturing Recruiting Lead

The Role

Right now our factories are floor plans, early equipment, and a handful of people who've done this before. In a few years they need to produce aircraft at rate. You'll help find everyone in between.

You'll be a core part of our manufacturing hiring across two sites: our Oxnard HQ and a new facility in Northwest Arkansas. Early on, that means landing the few people who set the foundation. Later, it means scaling fast without lowering the bar. When manufacturing hiring is lighter, you'll flex to support other teams across the company, so you'll never be short on work or on range.

The Work

• Own full-cycle hiring across manufacturing, industrial, quality, tooling, and production roles at both sites, from technicians on the floor to the leaders running them

• Learn manufacturing well enough to follow a layout review. Composites, tooling, process development, and factory ramp: you should know what good looks like

• Recruit from where the talent actually is. Automotive, EV, consumer hardware, and high-rate industrial manufacturing are often better sources for us than legacy aerospace

• Build our Northwest Arkansas talent pipeline from zero: schools, trade programs, local manufacturers, veteran networks, and community partners

• Hire ahead of the scale-up. Build relationships today with people we may not hire for two years

• Flex to support aircraft, supply chain, operations, and other teams when manufacturing volume allows. Manufacturing always comes first

You

• Have 4+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with meaningful time recruiting for manufacturing, production, or hardware teams

• Know the difference between a manufacturing engineer and an industrial engineer without looking it up

• Have hired through a factory launch, production ramp, or high-growth hardware environment and liked the pace

• Can run hiring in two very different markets without either one feeling like the afterthought

• Would rather source a composites tech out of a boat builder than wait for an applicant

Bonus Points

• Recruiting experience at an EV, automotive, aerospace, or hardware company during a plant launch or ramp

• Experience hiring hourly and skilled trades at volume alongside engineering roles

• Familiarity with the Northwest Arkansas or Midwest manufacturing talent market

• Supply chain or operations recruiting experience

Why This Seat

You get to build the hiring engine for a factory before it exists, at a company where manufacturing is the whole ballgame.

How We Recruit

We're a small recruiting team building a defense company that has to win. Here's how we operate, and we hire recruiters who already work this way.

The Standard. We know the work deeply. We are not generalists hiding behind job descriptions; we study the engineering, the domain, and the landscape until we can hold a real conversation with a practitioner. Every candidate who talks to us should call it the best recruiting experience of their career, and we each bring our own personality to get there. High touch, never scripted.

How We Think. One foot old school, one foot forward: we're obsessive about the fundamentals of recruiting and restless about finding better ways to do it. We play the long game and hire for what someone will do in two and five years, not just next quarter. And we'd rather define the industry standard than follow it.

How We Operate. Mission first, always. Speed is a competitive weapon, and we use it. Quality over comfort: we'll have the harder conversation with a hiring manager before we'll make the easy hire.

If that reads like a description of how you already work, we want to talk.

ITAR requirement

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Swarm Aero is an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse backgrounds and experiences and make employment decisions without regard to race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, or disability.

What We Offer

• Meaningful equity in a high-growth defense technology company

• Competitive base salary commensurate with experience

• Medical, dental, vision, and 401k

• PTO and paid sick leave

• Monthly wellness stipend

• Daily catered lunch (office)

• Paid parental leave

• Direct impact on a critical national security mission

• A world-class team of engineers and operators solving genuinely hard problems