Job Description
Job Description
Reports to: VP of Operations Position Type: Full-Time
Location: Florida or Vermont
Summary of Position
Century Arms is seeking an experienced Manufacturing Engineer, Barrel Cell, to take technical ownership of the setup, operation, development, and ongoing performance of our barrel manufacturing cell.
This is a highly hands-on engineering and process-ownership position—not a traditional machine operator or machinist role. The Manufacturing Engineer, Barrel will be responsible for the complete barrel manufacturing process, including equipment setup and operation, tooling selection, process development, troubleshooting, quality control, production readiness, and continuous improvement.
The successful candidate must have direct, hands-on experience manufacturing rifled firearm barrel blanks, including deep-hole gun drilling, precision reaming, and button rifling. This is not a training-level position. The individual must possess the technical knowledge and practical experience necessary to independently establish, operate, and optimize the barrel manufacturing process.
As the barrel manufacturing operation expands, this individual will help build the operation and provide technical leadership, training, and oversight to additional team members supporting the cell.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Barrel Manufacturing and Equipment Operation
- Assume technical ownership of the barrel manufacturing cell and the complete barrel manufacturing process.
- Independently set up, operate, troubleshoot, and optimize barrel manufacturing equipment.
- Perform and oversee the deep-hole gun drilling of firearm barrel blanks.
- Perform and oversee precision barrel reaming and preparation for rifling.
- Set up and operate button-rifling equipment, ensuring that established rifling specifications are consistently achieved.
- Support equipment installation, process validation, production ramp-up, and the ongoing development of the barrel manufacturing cell.
- Maintain responsibility for the overall capability, reliability, and performance of the barrel manufacturing process.
Process Development and Optimization
- Develop, establish, document, and continuously improve manufacturing processes for barrel production.
- Determine and optimize tooling, fixtures, feeds, speeds, coolant parameters, chip evacuation, and other critical process variables.
- Establish repeatable manufacturing processes capable of meeting production, quality, dimensional, and cycle-time requirements.
- Identify equipment, tooling, fixture, and process improvements necessary to increase quality, efficiency, throughput, and production capability.
- Apply continuous-improvement principles to reduce variation, improve process stability, and increase manufacturing performance.
Troubleshooting and Technical Problem-Solving
- Diagnose and resolve equipment, tooling, dimensional, bore-quality, rifling, and production issues.
- Conduct root-cause analysis and implement effective corrective and preventive actions.
- Troubleshoot manufacturing and maintenance-related issues that may affect product quality, equipment reliability, or production output.
- Work cross-functionally with Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Maintenance, and Operations to resolve technical and production problems.
Quality and Process Control
- Partner with Manufacturing Engineering and Quality to establish inspection methods, process controls, acceptance criteria, and quality standards.
- Inspect and evaluate bore diameter, straightness, concentricity, surface finish, rifling geometry, and other critical barrel characteristics.
- Ensure that manufacturing processes consistently meet engineering drawings, specifications, quality requirements, and applicable manufacturing standards.
- Support process-capability studies, first-article inspections, equipment qualifications, and manufacturing validation activities.
Documentation, Training, and Technical Leadership
- Develop and maintain work instructions, setup procedures, process documentation, manufacturing standards, and troubleshooting guides for the barrel cell.
- Establish best practices and training procedures for employees assigned to the barrel manufacturing operation.
- Provide technical instruction, guidance, and hands-on support to future barrel cell team members.
- Assist in developing the technical capabilities of the team as the operation grows.
- Provide technical leadership and oversight while remaining actively involved in the daily operation of the equipment and manufacturing process.
Qualifications &Knowledge Required
- Direct, hands-on experience manufacturing firearm barrels or rifled barrel blanks.
- Demonstrated experience with deep-hole gun drilling, precision barrel reaming, and button rifling.
- Comprehensive understanding of the complete barrel manufacturing process—not experience limited to operating a single piece of equipment.
- Ability to independently set up, operate, troubleshoot, and optimize barrel manufacturing equipment.
- Experience developing or improving manufacturing processes, tooling, equipment setups, and production methods.
- Strong knowledge of precision tolerances, bore quality, cutting tools, feeds and speeds, coolant systems, and chip-evacuation methods.
- Experience using precision measuring, inspection, and metrology equipment.
- Ability to read and interpret engineering drawings, technical specifications, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), and manufacturing documentation.
- Strong mechanical aptitude and demonstrated technical problem-solving ability.
- Ability to identify root causes and implement practical, sustainable corrective actions.
- Ability to work independently and assume ownership of a manufacturing process from equipment setup through full production.
- Ability to provide technical leadership, train employees, and support the development of a team as the barrel cell grows.
Preferred Qualifications
- Five or more years of direct firearm-barrel manufacturing experience.
- Bachelor’s degree in manufacturing engineering, mechanical engineering, or a related field; or an equivalent combination of advanced technical education and extensive hands-on barrel manufacturing experience.
- Experience establishing, launching, expanding, or significantly improving a barrel manufacturing cell or production line.
- Experience with integrated or automated barrel manufacturing cells.
- Experience operating and troubleshooting UNISIG or comparable deep-hole drilling, reaming, and rifling equipment.
- Experience in high-volume firearms manufacturing, defense manufacturing, or another precision-manufacturing environment.
- CNC machining and programming experience.
- Experience developing manufacturing documentation, process controls, work instructions, and technical training materials.
- Previous experience in a technical lead, team lead, supervisory, or employee-development capacity.
Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate is more than a machinist who has operated barrel manufacturing equipment. This individual understands the complete barrel manufacturing process and can assume ownership of the barrel cell from both a technical and operational perspective.
The successful candidate will be equally comfortable operating equipment, diagnosing complex manufacturing problems, improving processes, collaborating with Engineering and Quality, and developing the documentation and standards necessary to create a reliable and scalable operation. As the barrel cell grows, this individual will also help train, develop, and provide technical leadership to the employees supporting the operation.
Working Conditions
Work is normally performed in a climate-controlled office environment and throughout a heated manufacturing and warehouse facility on a limited basis. Exposure to conditions of extreme heat/cold, poor ventilation, fumes and gases is very limited. Noise level is moderate and includes sounds of light shipping and receiving, and normal office equipment (computers, telephones, etc.). No known environmental hazards are encountered in normal performance of job duties.
Physical Demands
The physical demands and work environment characteristics described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions:
- Be able to lift objects commonly found in offices, up to 20 lbs.
- Able to work at a computer for long periods of time
- Able to work additional hours as needed. (Project timelines and work volume/deadlines may require more than 40 hours per week to complete essential duties of this job.)
- Must have mental processes for reasoning, remembering, mathematics and language ability (reading, writing and speaking English language) to perform the duties proficiently
- Able to work full-time, including early mornings, evenings and weekends as needed
- Must be comfortable and proficient handling and firing firearms of all types
Disclaimers
- This job description should not be interpreted to be a complete list of all the duties and responsibilities performed by the jobholder. To maintain organizational flexibility, management has the discretion to add, drop or change at any time the duties, responsibilities and expectations of this job.
- This job description does not constitute an offer of employment, continuous employment or an employment contract. We are an at-will employer and either you or the employer may terminate the employment relationship at any time, for any legal reason or for no reason.