About the job 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