Senior Operations Engineer

Overview

Homebuilding is one of the biggest industries in the world, and it's broken. It still builds the way it did a century ago, and it shows: homes take too long, schedules and budgets are guesses, quality is inconsistent, and there aren'tnearly enough of them. At Cover, we're fixing that. We design, engineer, permit, manufacture, and build fully custom homes and ADUs from our factory in Gardena, Los Angeles, using our all-steel panelized building system that fits together like life-size Lego, configured to every client's site and taste. They're built the way cars are built:in a factory, with a repeatable process, to tight tolerances. Right now many of those homes are for families who lost theirs in the 2025 LA fires.

You make this factory produce substantially more than it does today, by being on the floor, shoulder to shoulder with technicians and engineers, improving material flow, layout, uptime, and data. The gains come from a hundred pragmatic fixes that stick. The hard part is getting a floor full of people to change how they work.

Role

Keep the line running. Manufacturing Engineers write the work instructions. You make them real: implement them on the floor, catch deviations before they stop the line, and fix problems alongside the technicians doing the work. When an instruction doesn'tsurvive contact with the floor, you feed that back. You build the preventive maintenance routines that keep equipment up. None of this works unless the technicians trust you. You earn that on the floor, not from a desk.

Own quality on the floor. Engineers define the inspections. You make sure they happen, every home, every time. Track defects and rework, find root causes, and drive permanent fixes.

Raise throughput without raising headcount. You track throughput, efficiency, and downtime down to the operation and technician, and you drive improvements. Continuous improvement is expected. The job is the big gains on top of it, from changing how work moves through the factory, with quality held or improved. Those gains come from how the factory runs, not from what we buy. You go after the cheapest fix with the biggest payoff first, in flow, sequencing, training, and standard work. Heavy investment in automation is in our future, but its the last step. Right now the job is getting more out of what we already have.

Own material flow end to end. From purchase order to the truck leaving for site, how material moves through the factory is yours: receiving, storage, the right material at the right station at the right time, inventory records kept honest through work order discipline, finished product packed and dunnaged to engineering spec. You own the layout too: where stations sit, how material flows between them, where finished goods stage.

Make the factory run on its own data. We have more instrumentation than most factories our size: an ERP, a PLM, our own production system, and an internal MCP server that lets people and AI agents query across all of it. You feed it and you use it. Feeding it means the data is real: work orders, BOMs, routings, and stock match the floor, nothing happens off system, and the whole company trusts it to drive action. Using it means decisions. Weekly metrics, capacity, and open issues go out without being chased, every report with an owner and a decision it has changed. The goal: a factory where the data finds the problem before anyone goes looking. Your real leverage is people, not tools: getting operators and supervisors to trust the system enough to keep it honest is harder than any query you'll write.

You report directly to the Head of Operations.

Experience

Hard requirements:

You have directly made significant quality and throughput improvements on a production floor, and technicians and engineers alike trust you. Comfortable on the floor is necessary but not the bar. Having moved the floor is.

You have run an ERP or MRP system hands-on, not just been trained on one. You know how work orders, BOMs, inventory transactions, and routings work in practice, including how they break and what it takes to clean them up, and you have used that data to drive action for your selfand others.

You have been in an environment where rate and cost per unit were real daily pressures, not quarterly metrics. You know what it costs when a line goes down, when inventory is wrong, or when an inspection gets skipped.

5+ years in a manufacturing operations, production planning, or industrial engineering role. Time spent in a corporate or consulting function without sustained plant-level accountability and presence is not sufficient.

When something is wrong, you go to the problem and look at the data before you decide what to do about it.

You're curious about new tools and technology, AI included, and you use them to get more done, betterand faster.

Beyond those bars, what separates great:

Ownership instinct. When something is broken and it's unclear whose problem it is, you pick it up. The problems that fall between roles are the ones that stay broken the longest. You close them without being asked.

Logistics and inventory depth. You have owned a material flow function: receiving, kitting, warehouse, or similar. You know how inventory accuracy degrades and how to recover it.

Process documentation that people use. You have written SOPs or work instructions that a team adopted and followed. You can make a process clear to someone who wasn'tin the room when it was designed.

Data instincts. SQL or equivalent helps, but even a basic understanding of how tables and databases work goes a long way once you pair it with AI.

Useful but not required: experience in high-volume manufacturing, automotive supply chain, fulfillment, food and beverage, or medical device environments where cost per unit and production rate are tracked daily. Experience owning a logistics or 3PL function. Lean principles used in practice, not just in training.

Compensation

All our positions offer a compensation package that includes equity and robust benefits.

The base salary for this role is between $125,000 - $155,000 per year, depending on experience and demonstrated operational ownership track record.

Our compensation package extends beyond cash salary and encompasses various elements that contribute to a comprehensive rewards system. In addition to a competitive salary, we offer equity through stock options, a discretionary annual bonus, health and fitness reimbursements, high-quality company-subsidized healthcare, a 401(k), and generous paid time off (PTO).

Cover aims to be competitive with its overall compensation packages relative to the market considering the company stage, industry, funding, and location. This market range includes salary, applicable bonuses, and equity, which are each important components of an offer from Cover. More details can be provided during the interview.

Cover's pay ranges are informed and defined through professional-grade salary surveys and compensation data sources. The actual compensation package offered to a successful candidate will additionally be influenced by a variety of factors including the essential functions of the role, experience, credentials and certifications, educational attainment, skill level, and prior accomplishments.

Our mission is to make thoughtfully designed and well-built homes for everyone. We believe that having a diverse and inclusive workplace brings a range of unique perspectives to the table and helps us better accomplish this mission. We are an equal opportunity employer to all, regardless of age, ancestry, color, disability (mental and physical), exercising the right to family care and medical leave, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, political affiliation, race, religious creed, sex (includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), and sexual orientation. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination.