General Manager

THE COMPANY
Our client is a well established, privately held ISO 9001 certified contract manufacturing organization serving a diverse base of U.S. and international customers. The company provides a broad range of value-added manufacturing and assembly solutions for customers across industrial, consumer electronics, telecommunications, electronics, medical devices, automotive, and other engineered-product markets. With a strong commitment to quality, customer service, and operational excellence, the organization has built a solid reputation as a trusted manufacturing partner and is well positioned for continued growth. 

THE POSITION

The company is seeking an accomplished, entrepreneurial General Manager to lead the company through its next stage of profitable growth and operational development. This is not a traditional plant management assignment. It is a hands-on business leadership role with responsibility for operations, customers, commercial development, profitability, cash, and organizational performance.
Reporting directly to the President and Parrtner, the General Manager will have meaningful authority and the opportunity to make a highly visible impact on an established privately held cross-border manufacturing business. The successful executive will be equally comfortable on the manufacturing floor, reviewing the P&L, developing a customer relationship, challenging an operating assumption, and closing a new business opportunity.

The Mandate: Operate. Grow. Build.
The General Manager will take ownership of the business with two equally important objectives: Deliver operational excellence today while building a stronger commercial engine for tomorrow.
The GM will lead daily performance across safety, quality, delivery, labor efficiency, throughput, inventory, purchasing and customer satisfaction, while developing and executing a disciplined strategy to expand existing accounts, reactivate former customers and win profitable new business. The company is looking for a leader who does more than manage what already exists. The mandate is to improve it, grow it and make it more scalable. The client specifically identifies the need to move business development from dependence on the owner and periodic referrals toward a repeatable commercial process, while simultaneously strengthening management accountability and operating discipline.

Key Leadership Responsibilities

• Assume full leadership of operating performance, including quality, delivery, productivity, purchasing, inventory, working capital and customer escalations.
• Develop and execute a profitable growth strategy across electromechanical assembly,  wire harnesses, cable assemblies, box build, and related contract-manufacturing services.
• Personally cultivate relationships with senior decision-makers at current and prospective customers and convert those relationships into RFQs, plant visits, new programs and revenue.
• Expand strategic existing accounts and develop a disciplined approach to reactivating former customers.
• Strengthen quoting speed, commercial follow-up, program launches and handoffs between sales, engineering, purchasing and production.
• Establish a simple, highly accountable weekly operating rhythm with clear owners, deadlines and corrective actions.
• Manage the P&L with particular attention to operating profit, contribution margin, pricing, cash conversion, inventory, WIP and working capital.
• Assess and develop managers and supervisors, address performance gaps and build greater organizational depth and succession capability.
• Introduce practical uses of AI, automation and modern digital tools that improve productivity, quotation analysis, prospecting, SOPs, reporting and internal knowledge, while maintaining appropriate safeguards for customer and company information.
• Serve as a candid, trusted business partner to the President, communicating facts, risks, alternatives and recommended actions with transparency.

The expectation is that the executive be comfortable working lean, using data, visiting the production floor regularly and personally driving actions to closure.
The company has established a particularly balanced scorecard for the position: new-customer growth and operations represent 20% each of the mandate,  current client performance and growth 15%, profit and cash another 20%, Leadership 7.5%, and Digital/AI 7.5% with significant emphasis also placed on existing-client growth and former-client reactivation.

THE CANDIDATE

Qualifications
The ideal candidate is an experienced manufacturing executive who combines P&L leadership, operational discipline and genuine commercial capability. We are particularly interested in executives who bring:

• Approximately 12+ years of progressive manufacturing experience, including at least five years of broad P&L, General Management or site leadership responsibility.
• Experience leading an entrepreneurial or small to mid-sized manufacturing business, ideally in the approximately $10 million–$50 million USD revenue range.
• Direct or closely adjacent experience with electro-mechanical assembly, wire harnesses, cable assemblies, connectors, box build, contract manufacturing or engineered products.
• Demonstrated success personally winning, expanding or recovering customer accounts, not simply supervising a sales organization.
• Strong command of manufacturing fundamentals including quality, delivery, labor productivity, purchasing, inventory, new product/program launches and corrective action.
• Strong financial acumen and the ability to manage profitability, contribution margin, pricing, cash and working capital.
• Experience with ISO 9001 and regulated customer environments; familiarity with UL/RoHS requirements and exposure to ISO 13485 are advantageous.
• Fluency in English and Spanish, together with experience operating in a U.S.–Mexico cross-border manufacturing environment.
• Practical familiarity with ERP, CRM, analytics, automation and modern AI tools.

Leadership Style & Culture Fit
The company is not looking for a corporate administrator. The successful leader will be hands-on, commercially minded, analytical, decisive and highly accountable. This executive should be able to move from strategic planning to detailed execution in the same day and thrive in an entrepreneurial environment where impact matters more than hierarchy.

The right individual will:

• Prefer facts over politics.
• Action over bureaucracy.
• Accountability over excuses.
• Simple systems over unnecessary complexity.
• Results over titles.

Integrity, confidentiality and sound judgment are non-negotiable. The GM must also have the confidence and maturity to challenge the owner respectfully when the facts warrant it. As the client put it, the challenge is finding an experienced leader with the contacts and knowledge who is also willing to “get his hands dirty” and views the opportunity as a professional challenge rather than simply another job.

Why This Opportunity?

For the right entrepreneurial manufacturing executive, this is an opportunity to have an unusually direct impact. The General Manager will have:

Direct access to the President and Owner.
A meaningful voice in the direction of the company.

Real operating authority.
The ability to make decisions and see the results.

A platform to grow.
An established manufacturing operation, existing customers, certifications and capacity from which to build.

A strategic nearshore location.
The companies’ operation provides close proximity to Southern California and access to the broader North American manufacturing market. The company has 98.6% on-time delivery and a 99.7% customer quality rate across more than 25 million units shipped in 2025.

Opportunity to share in the company’s growth.
Most importantly, this is an opportunity for an executive who wants to build, not simply maintain. The company is seeking a leader capable of strengthening the company’s operating discipline, developing its leadership team, creating a repeatable commercial engine and helping transform an established manufacturing platform into a larger, stronger and more profitable enterprise.