James Ensor

Following successful growth and development of the New Zealand production team, I was selected to replicate this success for the U.S. operations. I continued managing a team of 30 in New Zealand while implementing the same strategy in the U.S., achieving a successful handover of the New Zealand team after one year. This enabled the U.S. team to expand and lead the execution of Space System Programs, growing to a team of 70, including leadership roles.

• Led the selection and procurement or manufacturing of testing assets (thermal chambers, vibration tables, hardware-in-the-loop rigs).
• Built an Assembly, Integration, and Testing capability from the ground up, scaling to a team of 30 in under one year to deliver a 17-spacecraft, $140 million program.
• Established a small, agile internal harnessing group to support high-mix, quick-turn harnesses for ground support and deep space flight missions, reducing costs and lead times while leveraging external vendors to manage capacity demand spikes.
• Supported Space Systems teams in rapidly manufacturing avionics components, from PCBA design through acceptance and qualification testing, with most environmental testing conducted in-house, including a small-batch internal PCBA assembly process.
• Managed departments in New Zealand and the U.S. to transfer product lines between countries, balancing cost, supply chain constraints, and lead times.
• Developed technicians into technical experts and future leaders, authoring a technician performance framework now used globally for over 700 technicians during merit review cycles.
• While not directly managing Supply Chain, Manufacturing Engineering, or Quality, I led through influence on multiple projects, mentoring engineers in failure analysis, containment actions, process improvements, and project management.

Managed three production departments of 5-10 avionics technicians each with supporting manufacturing engineers. Developed manufacturing processes and new product introduction for all high voltage batteries, harnesses and avionics components for the launch vehicle, Electron.

• Developed annual operating plans which included CAPEX, and hiring requirements.
• Executed operating plans to meet the needs of the manifest schedule
• Led improvements in quality and production flow by using lean manufacturing principles
• Improved quality through prompt root cause mitigation resulting in process or design changes

Hired to grow the avionics production teams for Electron. Initially built the high voltage battery team and assumed growing responsibility in the areas of harness and avionics component, manufacturing and testing.

• Grew the production team for Avionics to a team of 30 technicians
• Worked very closely with design and test engineers to ensure efficiency and quality was considered early
• Developed manufacturing standards and processes
• Utilized interim software packages to develop manufacturing plans and processes in lieu of full ERP/MRP software
• Met production rate increase of 1/year up to 8/year.

Following my tenure in the Airforce, I started contracting as a technician to many different companies including:

• Auckland War Memorial Museum (Repair and new installs of exhibitions)
• D&M Acoustic (New high end Audio installs)
• Theatrelight (Functional checks and repairs of power distributions)
• Rocket Lab (Avionics Technician)

Quickly developed a strong passion for Rocket Lab and agreed to permanent employment. I continued to run the company in the background and hired 2 employees for a period to run out work and also assist with other Rocket Lab work.

A long tenure serving the Royal New Zealand Airforce primarily supporting the P3K2 Orion out of 5 Squadron.

First four years was as a junior tradesmen with a mix of on-the-job and classroom training. Following that, quickly grew in competency, reaching the level of Acting Sergeant, leading a group of Avionics Technicians and certifying airworthiness of aircraft following maintenance.

• Completed various exercises in South Korea, Fiji and Australia
• Carried out maintenance activities in time-critical search and rescue missions
• Broad experience from system level faultfinding while in operational environments to intermediate level component level testing and repair to periods of deep level maintenance and aircraft modification programs.