Staff Product Operations Engineer

About The Role

The Product Operations Engineering team serves as the technical bridge between product design engineering, customers, and our global manufacturing organization.  As Staff Product Operations Engineer, you will bring a blend of deep manufacturing expertise, knowledge of the product design lifecycle, and strong cross-functional leadership to ensure customer requirements are accurately defined, interpreted, and translated into actionable direction for manufacturing.

What You Will Do

This role requires a unique blend of engineering depth, analytical rigor, and stakeholder leadership.  You will triangulate between customers, design engineering, and factory teams; step in as the "glue" when ownership of technical needs is unclear; and help shape manufacturing readiness for hyperscale compute, storage, and high-density AI GPU systems.

You will play a critical role in ensuring a seamless customer experience - fostering transparent collaboration, supporting visible process excellence, and contributing to high-quality products landing at customer data centers.

• Lead the technical interface between customer engineering, product design, and factory teams, ensuring clarity and alignment of requirements.
• Drive the interpretation, analysis, and translation of customer requirements into actionable technical inputs for NPI, manufacturing engineering, test engineering, and quality engineering.
• Serve as the bridge between customer engineering, product design engineering, and factory operations—balancing customer needs with manufacturing feasibility.
• Triangulate between quality, factory, and product design teams to identify, prioritize, and resolve manufacturability issues across both NPI and MP product lifecycle stages.  Oversee the resolution of gaps, ensuring continuous customer engagement and internal accountability.
• Partner closely with NPI and the technical launch teams during new product launches to embed customer-driven requirements early and accurately.
• Drive ownership of complex, cross-functional operations and manufacturing issues, serving as the focal point when accountability spans multiple organizations.
• Represent the factory in customer engineering discussions, ensuring that product design decisions account for manufacturability, yield, and operational feasibility.
• Combine a deep knowledge of factory systems, product lifecycle management, and hyperscale customer context into a unified technical perspective that drives clear prioritization and decision-making.
• Apply engineering expertise to guide the development of solutions that are robust, scalable, and manufacturable.
• Champion a culture of continuous learning, analytical rigor, and growth mindset within the organization.
• Influence and inspire cross-functional teams to take ownership of customer requirements and drive manufacturing execution with integrity.
• Operate with a sense of urgency to ensure customer needs are met in fast-moving, high-pressure environments.

What You Bring

The right person for this role is an agent of change and has exceptional analytical capabilities, thrives in a fast-paced environment, loves problem-solving, is a good communicator, and is passionate about enabling the future of cloud computing.

• Education: Bachelor's degree in engineering (e.g. manufacturing, industrial, electrical, systems, or related field).  Master's degree preferred.
• 8-15 years of relevant experience in an engineering role, or 6-12 years with a master's degree.
• Experience in one or more of: manufacturing engineering, test engineering, quality engineering, electrical engineering, or systems engineering.
• Demonstrated experience working with or alongside customer-facing engineering groups.
• Ability to clearly articulate technical issues and requirements across diverse stakeholder groups; comfortable interfacing effectively at all organizational levels.
• Comfortable working across geographies, time zones, and cultures to align distributed teams.
• Strong background in analytical methods, structure problem solving, and data-driven decision making.
• Proven ability to thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced environments with changing priorities and deadlines.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams in global, matrixed environments is highly desirable.
• Ability to convert complex (often data driven) topics to clear overviews and insights.
• Proven ability to perform effectively in a demanding environment with changing workloads and deadlines.
• Fluency with continuous improvement / lean programs.
• Fluency with Microsoft Office tools (Outlook, Excel, and Word).

ZT Systems, a Sanmina Company,  assesses market data to ensure a competitive compensation package is created for all our employees. The typical base salary for this position is expected to be between $93,000 and $136,400annually. If hired, the final base salary will be determined on an individual basis taking into consideration experience, skills, knowledge, education and/or certifications.

Base salary is just one component of ZT Systems total rewards philosophy. We take pride in offering a wide range of benefits and perks that appeal to the variety of needs across our diverse employee base. Other rewards may include bonus, paid time off, 401(k) retirement savings plan, tuition reimbursement, wellbeing resources, and more.

We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this opportunity but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

#LI-DH1

About ZT Systems

At ZT Systems, a Sanmina Company, you’ll get to do work you are proud of alongside smart, passionate people. Every day, there are opportunities to collaborate with the best in the industry to design, build, and deliver impactful solutions to world-class customers. Along the way, you will gain hands-on experience in a fast-paced environment that’s challenging, rewarding, and career-defining.

A culture built around our values we work hard and think fast. We view challenges as opportunities—to do better, push harder, and be faster than we were the day before. When we fail, we learn from it and move on together. And when we succeed, we use the momentum to go even further. We create value with everything we do, building the foundation of today—and transforming the future of tomorrow.

Join ZT Systems and help us build technology infrastructure that connects the world.

What We Offer
At ZT Systems, a Sanmina Company, we believe that investing in our people is key to our continued growth and innovation. When you join our team, you’ll gain access to a comprehensive and inclusive benefits package designed to support your well-being, financial security, and professional development—both now and in the future.

Compensation & Financial Security

-Competitive base salary

-Performance-based annual bonus eligibility

-401(k) retirement savings plan

-Tuition reimbursement for eligible education programs

Health & Wellness

-Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with access to leading providers

-Mental health resources and employee wellness support programs-

-Company-paid life and disability insurance

Time Away & Work-Life Balance

-Paid time off (PTO) and company-paid holidays

-Parental leave and family care support programs

Growth & Purpose

-Structured training programs and on-the-job learning opportunities

-Matching gifts and volunteer programs to support causes you care about

These benefits are available to eligible employees and are designed to grow with you as your career evolves. Full benefits and eligibility varies by work location. Learn more about our benefits here.

ZT Group Int’l. is an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. ZT Systems provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

Please be aware that certain positions may require the applicant to either 1) be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or 2) be eligible to obtain an export control license or license exception from the Bureau of Industry and Science & U.S. Department of Commerce. All offers of employment will be conditional subject to the foregoing.