Director of Supply Chain

Position Summary

The Director 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 Director of Supply Chain will personally execute planning, lead the supply chain team, and closely partner with team members on sourcing, supplier management, and logistics, while building the systems and processes needed to scale.

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

Key Responsibilities

Systems & Processes

Define, implement, and execute inventory strategies including safety stock, reorder points, and buffers

Implement and operate planning, procurement, and inventory management systems

Partner with Finance to manage inventory investment, working capital, and material cost forecasts

Partner with Finance, Operations, and IT to implement ERP systems, owning supply-chain-specific configuration, data integrity, and day-to-day use

Define, own, and execute incoming inspection strategy for purchased parts in partnership with Engineering and Operations

Supply Chain Strategy, Planning, & Risk Management (prevention and mitigation)

Ensure material availability for production operations

Maintain rolling forward visibility into inventory coverage, lead times, supplier capacity constraints, and demand signals.

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

Develop and execute sourcing strategies for critical components, including dual-sourcing and communicating build vs. buy decisions

Qualify, onboard, and develop suppliers and establish supplier performance metrics across delivery, quality, cost, and responsiveness

Lead supplier negotiations and capacity planning discussions

Cost-down

Drive material cost targets and cost-down execution in partnership with engineering and operations

Work closely with engineering on part selection, substitutions, and redesigns and ensure supply considerations are incorporated into engineering roadmaps

Operational Leadership

Establish and run regular operating rhythms (planning reviews, supplier and capacity reviews, fulfillment reviews, risk register reviews)

Define and manage against KPIs; maintain dashboards covering inventory coverage, shortages, supplier performance, and delivery commitments

Build playbooks for supply chain, sourcing, and logistics scenarios

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:

The salary range for this position is $110,000 to $190,000 annually

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.