Head of Manufacturing

Head of Manufacturing

Designation: VP/SVP ·

Reports to: Co-founder & COO ·

Level: Leadership

We are a Physical AI company building AI-powered sorting, grading, and packing machines for

fresh produce, deployed across India and international markets (fruit packers, quick-commerce

retailers,

and international channel partners). We're scaling from build-to-order, partner-led

manufacturing

toward a repeatable, quality-certified production system that can hold up to global fruit-packer

and

retail-automation standards.

We're looking for a Head of Manufacturing to own the full manufacturing function

—

internal build

capability, our external manufacturing partner network, and the safety/quality discipline that lets

us

deploy machines confidently anywhere in the world.

What You'll Own

Plant/system-level problem-solving: Trace defects, yield loss, and downtime across our full

commodity/machine-type portfolio (Sort, Pack, tray-packing robots) back to shared root causes

in material flow, information flow, or supplier quality

—

and fix them at the source, not just on

the machine in front of you.

The manufacturing roadmap: Decide which lines, machine types, and quality investments are

worth building this quarter, and which aren't. Own the build-vs-partner call for each machine

type and geography.

Safety and quality as a system, not a checklist: Own plant-level QA/QC audit cadence,

stop-the-line authority, and defect-recurrence prevention across shifts and machine lines

—

to

the standard our international fruit-packer and retail customers expect, not just domestic

compliance minimums.

Vendor ecosystem maturity: Move our manufacturing partners from transactional (reliable

delivery on committed orders) toward genuine capability partners, and eventually toward a

dual-sourced, resilient network so no single vendor or component delay can stall a customer

deployment.

Capability building: Install standard work, training pathways, and problem-solving methodology

so the shop floor gets better without you in the room.

Culture: Build overall safety as the cultural default, with the psychological safety to stop the line

without fear, and make near-miss/defect reporting blameless

—

so problem-solving becomes a

daily habit across shifts rather than something enforced from the top.

Working capital discipline: Partner with finance/ops on milestone-based procurement and

vendor payment structuring (advance / delivery / post-installation) to reduce blocked cash per

unit.

What Good Looks Like (Experience Needed in priority)

Execution: Thrives in ambiguity with high agency

manufacturing environment.

—

gets things done in a fast-scaling

Leadership style: A flexible, outcome-oriented leadership style, adapting the approach to the

problem rather than running a fixed playbook.

Development & engagement: People want to work for you, and you actively build your team's

capability and engagement.

capability and engagement.

Team building: A track record of building manufacturing teams at scale.

Safety system implementation: Your countermeasures hold via standard work and poka-yoke

—

not because someone's watching.

Vendor management: Vendors treat Intello as a partner worth prioritizing, not just another PO.

Process improvement: Handed

"yield is down 8% on the Sort line"

or

"the Q-Com rollout needs

150–200 units by 2028,

" you run it end-to-end without hand-holding.

Shop-floor behavior: Near-miss and defect reporting on your floor is blameless; people flag

problems instead of hiding them.

Quality management: You can look a European fruit-packer's or a Reliance/BigBasket-scale

retailer's quality audit in the eye without flinching.

What You Bring

10+

years in manufacturing engineering/operations, with at least 3–5 years owning plant-level or

multi-line scope (not just machine-level fixes).

Track record building or scaling a vendor/supplier network

—

ideally in precision machinery,

industrial automation, or electromechanical assembly.

Direct experience with safety/quality systems (root-cause analysis, poka-yoke, audit cadence) at

a level that satisfies export-quality or international customer standards.

Comfort operating in a startup environment: build-to-order variability, partner-led

manufacturing, and capital-constrained scaling

—

not a mature, single-site mass-production

setup.

Bonus: exposure to food-tech/agri-tech hardware, sorting/grading/vision-based machinery, or

Bonus: exposure to food-tech/agri-tech hardware, sorting/grading/vision-based machinery, or

cold-chain/produce industry.

Why This Role Matters Now

we are moving from proving the technology to proving it can be built and deployed at scale

—

India

SaaS fleet expansion, India Capex build-to-order lines,

~150–200 Q-Com units through 2028, and

international partner-led deployments. Manufacturing quality and vendor reliability are now the

constraint on growth, not the AI. This role sets that foundation