Head of Supply Chain

Position Summary

The Head of Supply Chain owns material flow from suppliers to manufacturing. This role is accountable for building and operating Elve’s resilient and scalable supply chain spanning sourcing, planning, and fulfillment.

You are responsible for anticipating, preventing, and mitigating supply chain problems before they impact production or customers. You will ensure that materials, production, and logistics move in lockstep, and that risks, constraints, and tradeoffs are surfaced and addressed early.

This is a hands-on leadership role. In the near term, the Head of Supply Chain will personally execute planning, and closely partner with team members on sourcing, supplier management, and logistics, while building the systems and processes needed to scale. Team growth will follow demonstrated execution, not precede it.

Strong supply chain execution is critical to Elve’s ability to deliver reliably to customers while scaling a manufacturing operation.

Key Responsibilities

1. Systems & Processes
1. Define, implement, and execute inventory strategies including safety stock, reorder points, and buffers
2. Implement and operate planning, procurement, and inventory management systems
3. Partner with Finance to manage inventory investment, working capital, and material cost forecasts
4. Partner with Finance, Operations, and IT to implement ERP systems, owning supply-chain-specific configuration, data integrity, and day-to-day use
5. Define, own, and execute incoming inspection strategy for purchased parts in partnership with Engineering and Operations
2. Supply Chain Strategy, Planning, & Risk Management (prevention and mitigation)
1. Ensure material availability for production operations
2. Maintain rolling forward visibility into inventory coverage, lead times, supplier capacity constraints, and demand signals. 
3. Eliminate last-minute expedites, line stoppages, and surprise shortages through disciplined preventative planning, early intervention, and mitigation strategies. Identify supply risks early and develop prevention and mitigation plans in partnership with operations and engineering
4. Develop and execute sourcing strategies for critical components, including dual-sourcing and communicating build vs. buy decisions 
5. Qualify, onboard, and develop suppliers and establish supplier performance metrics across delivery, quality, cost, and responsiveness
6. Lead supplier negotiations and capacity planning discussions
3. Cost-down
1. Drive material cost targets and cost-down execution in partnership with engineering and operations
2. Work closely with engineering on part selection, substitutions, and redesigns and ensure supply considerations are incorporated into engineering roadmaps
4. Operational Leadership
1. Establish and run regular operating rhythms (planning reviews, supplier and capacity reviews, fulfillment reviews, risk register reviews)
2. Define and manage against KPIs; maintain dashboards covering inventory coverage, shortages, supplier performance, and delivery commitments
3. Build playbooks for supply chain, sourcing, and logistics scenarios
4. Gradually develop and lead a lean supply chain function that scales with the business

What Success Looks Like

• The supply chain and fulfillment function scales smoothly and remains lean with growing production volume to 10x current throughput
• Supply chain risks are visible early, clearly communicated, and actively managed
• Regularly address material shortages, supplier delays, and capacity constraints before they impact production or customers

Qualifications

• 7+ years in supply chain, sourcing, logistics, or manufacturing operations
• Experience owning supply planning in a production environment
• Willingness to roll up your sleeves and personally do the work while leading a small, lean supply chain team
• High ownership of outcomes
• Background supporting complex, engineered hardware
• Demonstrated success managing suppliers, lead times, and logistics flows
• Demonstrated capability with supply chain planning tools (spreadsheets, automations, data analysis)
• Proactive and structured in approach to planning and execution
• Strong systems thinker
• Programming (python) and automation of supply chain tools
• Clear communicator across technical and commercial teams
• Technically conversant and able to engage with engineers on design and manufacturability
• Adaptable and decisive in fast-moving environments
• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations (EAR), candidates must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, protected individual, or otherwise eligible to obtain required authorization.

Preferred Skills (Not Required)

• Experience in aerospace, defense, RF, vacuum electronics, semiconductor, or other high-reliability hardware
• Experience in a high growth, venture capital-backed startup environment
• ERP / MRP implementation experience
• Quality inspection experience
• Experience scaling supply chain and fulfillment from pilot to higher-volume production
• Familiarity with export controls (ITAR) and regulated shipping environments

Benefits

Benefits Include:

• Health benefits (medical, dental, vision)
• Vacation
• A taste of the start-up life
• Exposure to cutting-edge technology in vacuum electronics, materials science, and additive manufacturing

What it’s like to work at Elve

We are an expanding team, on a mission to bring the next generation of high-speed wireless connectivity to a billion people worldwide. That kind of impact is not going to be achieved with incremental improvements- we are gunning for orders of magnitude advances in production capability, cost, size, and power in the mm-wave RF amplifier market. We work really hard, make sure we get good sleep, we handle conflict intentionally, and we expect great things from each other.