Forward Deployed Consultant, Manufacturing

Role overview Lead customer engagements that identify, build, and validate AI-enabled improvements to manufacturing operations. You will combine executive-level advisory work with hands-on solution development, bringing industrial expertise to pursuits and partnering with account teams to demonstrate measurable business value.

Responsibilities - Work with senior manufacturing and supply-chain leaders to set transformation priorities and assess whether opportunities are ready for a focused validation engagement. - Define engagement goals, business value, approach, success measures, and follow-on proposals with account colleagues. - Run validation projects from process discovery through solution build, testing on customer data and systems, and executive readout. - Rework workflows such as product development and stage-gate review, quality improvement, portfolio management, launch readiness, and process transformation using AI-oriented approaches. - Connect workflow solutions to enterprise systems, including ERP, product lifecycle management, manufacturing execution, and quality platforms. - Build ROI cases and KPI baselines, support commercial proposals, plan post-sale services, and share findings with internal teams and through external thought leadership.

Requirements - At least eight years in consulting, forward-deployed engineering, solution consulting, or enterprise transformation, with substantial manufacturing or industrial experience. - Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, such as new product introduction, engineering change management, quality methods, production planning, continuous improvement, and maintenance. - Familiarity with industrial enterprise systems and where operational data resides, including ERP, PLM, MES, and quality management tools. - Confidence working with executive and plant-level stakeholders, including operations, supply-chain, and quality leaders. - Ability to build working generative AI solutions, use AI development tools and integrations effectively, and engage engineering support when needed. - Skill in financial analysis and in building evidence-based value cases; comfortable working independently, in ambiguity, and at customer sites.

Benefits and work setup - Customer-site travel may reach 40%. - Benefits generally include equity, a wellbeing benefit, work-from-home equipment support, and an annual learning and development stipend; specific benefits vary by location.