Engineering Lab Manager at Castelion in Torrance, CA

Why Castelion, Why Now

Castelion is moving incredibly fast to develop and deliver advanced defense systems at a time when execution matters more than ever. We believe focus, ownership, and excellence are decisive advantages - and we're building a world-class team to turn bold ideas into real capability.

This is a rare opportunity to join at an early stage, where you'll have significant ownership, collaborate with exceptional teammates, and make a direct, measurable impact on our mission and the future of the company - regardless of your function.

Engineering Lab Manager

An Engineering Lab Manager at Castelion owns the day-to-day operation, readiness, and continuous improvement of engineering laboratory facilities supporting rapid development, integration, and test of next-generation hardware. This role is responsible for ensuring engineering teams have safe, reliable, and capable lab environments, equipment, tooling, and resources to execute their work with speed and precision.

The Engineering Lab Manager partners closely with engineering, manufacturing, facilities, safety, quality, IT, supply chain, and external vendors to establish and maintain laboratory capabilities, manage equipment and infrastructure, resolve operational constraints, and continuously improve lab efficiency and utilization.

Responsibilities:

• Own the day-to-day operation and readiness of assigned engineering laboratories, ensuring facilities, equipment, tooling, utilities, and supporting infrastructure are available and capable of meeting engineering requirements.
• Establish and maintain lab operating procedures, standards, and processes that enable safe, efficient, and repeatable engineering development and test activities.
• Coordinate lab scheduling and resource allocation across multiple engineering teams, balancing competing priorities and maximizing utilization of shared equipment and facilities.
• Own the acquisition, installation, commissioning, maintenance, calibration, and lifecycle management of laboratory equipment, instrumentation, tooling, and test infrastructure.
• Develop and maintain equipment and lab readiness metrics, identifying constraints, capacity gaps, maintenance requirements, and upcoming resource needs before they impact engineering schedules.
• Partner with engineering teams to define laboratory requirements for new development programs, including equipment, instrumentation, facilities, utilities, environmental requirements, test capabilities, and supporting infrastructure.
• Coordinate with facilities, EHS, IT, quality, security, and other support organizations to ensure laboratories meet applicable safety, regulatory, environmental, cybersecurity, and operational requirements.
• Establish and maintain relationships with equipment manufacturers, calibration providers, service organizations, contractors, and other external suppliers to support lab operations and minimize equipment downtime.
• Manage laboratory inventory, consumables, spare parts, tooling, and other resources required to maintain continuous engineering operations.
• Develop and implement preventive maintenance, calibration, and equipment health programs to maximize equipment availability and reliability.
• Identify, prioritize, and drive closure of lab operational constraints, including equipment failures, facility limitations, utility issues, material shortages, vendor delays, and resource conflicts.
• Support rapid development and test activities by coordinating lab resources and enabling engineering teams to quickly configure, modify, and validate test environments as requirements evolve.
• Develop and deploy opportunities to automate, standardize, and improve laboratory processes, reducing manual effort and increasing lab utilization, reliability, and engineering throughput.
• Establish systems for equipment documentation, configuration control, calibration records, maintenance history, operating procedures, and lab asset tracking.
• Lead investigations into equipment or lab-related failures that impact engineering activities and drive corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
• Support capital planning and budgeting for laboratory equipment, facilities, tooling, and infrastructure based on current and projected engineering demand.
• Support continuous improvement initiatives focused on safety, equipment availability, engineering velocity, cost reduction, quality, and overall lab efficiency.
• Where applicable, lead and develop laboratory technicians, contractors, and other lab support personnel, establishing clear expectations for safety, execution, responsiveness, and technical capability.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, science, operations, facilities, or a related technical field with 3+ years of relevant professional experience; or 6+ years of relevant professional experience in engineering laboratory operations, test operations, manufacturing, facilities, or a related technical environment.
• Hands-on experience operating or managing engineering laboratories, test facilities, manufacturing environments, or other technical workspaces.
• Experience managing laboratory equipment, instrumentation, tooling, facilities, or test infrastructure.
• Experience working in an environment requiring strong adherence to safety, operational, and technical procedures.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities with an emphasis on speed, precision, safety, and operational readiness.
• Highly self-directed, adaptable, and capable of prioritizing competing requirements in a fast-paced engineering environment.
• Proven ability to build and maintain effective relationships with engineering teams, facilities, safety, quality, supply chain, vendors, and external service providers.
• Experience managing oscilloscopes, power supplies, electronic test equipment, environmental chambers, data acquisition systems, RF equipment, mechanical test equipment, fabrication tools, or similar engineering laboratory equipment.
• Experience with equipment calibration, preventive maintenance, asset management, and equipment lifecycle planning.
• Experience developing laboratory procedures, safety processes, equipment documentation, and operational standards.
• Proficiency with technical and business tools such as MS Office, Excel, Smartsheet, Confluence, JIRA, Power BI, ERP/asset management systems, or similar platforms.
• Experience developing dashboards, automated tracking systems, or other tools to improve laboratory utilization, equipment availability, and operational visibility.
• Experience supporting hardware development, integration, qualification, or test in aerospace, defense, electronics, mechanical, propulsion, or other complex hardware environments.
• Experience managing laboratory construction, facility modifications, equipment installations, or capital equipment projects.
• Experience leading technicians, contractors, or cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated success driving continuous improvement initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, or related methodologies.

Castelion offers a generous benefits package. Please refer to the bottom of our Careers page for more details.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Additional Eligibility Requirements

This position may require access to classified information or restricted U.S. Government sites, systems, or information, as determined by the Company and/or applicable U.S. Government requirements. If the position is so designated, your employment in the role may be contingent upon your ability to obtain and maintain the required U.S. Government security clearance or other government authorization, and to satisfy any citizenship or other eligibility requirements imposed by applicable law, regulation, executive order, or government contract requirements. You will be notified if and when such requirements apply.

Affirmative Action/EEO Statement

Castelion is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Castelion is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities throughout the application and hiring process. If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete an application, participate in the interview process, or otherwise participate in the hiring process, please contact hr@castelion.com. Requests for accommodation will be considered on an individual basis and handled in accordance with applicable law.

Castelion is committed to fostering a workplace where employment decisions are based on qualifications, business needs, and the ability to perform the essential functions of the role, with or without reasonable accommodation.

EAR/ITAR Requirements

This position requires access to export-controlled information, and as such, employment (or hiring of a contractor) is contingent upon the candidate’s ability to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing being required by the Bureau of Industry and Security and/or the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.