Director of Manufacturing in Sutton Courtenay

Director of Manufacturing 

Automotive, FMCG, General Manufacturing 

Highly Competitive Salary Plus Car Allowance, Bonus & Benefits 

Step into a high-impact leadership role where your decisions directly improve safety, quality, delivery and customer confidence. This Director of Manufacturing role is your chance to shape a scalable manufacturing function, build strong leadership capability, and drive continuous improvement across Quality, Production, Manufacturing Engineering, Supply Chain and Logistics within the automotive manufacturing industry.

As a Director of Manufacturing you will: 

• Lead manufacturing delivery across safety, cost, quality, delivery and productivity, with consistent operational discipline.
• Embed a strong culture of safety, wellbeing and environmental responsibility, ensuring teams work to clear standards.
• Drive operational excellence through structured problem solving, reducing scrap, rework and waste while improving right-first-time performance.
• Implement and sustain relevant industry standards and production systems, including IATF 16949, in a practical and scalable way.
• Own manufacturing budget and resource planning, balancing investment in people, capability and infrastructure with disciplined cost control.
• Strengthen supply chain and logistics performance, supporting resilient value-stream planning and effective Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP).

The Director of Manufacturing will have:

• Proven leadership experience within manufacturing, with a track record of delivering measurable improvements across operational performance.
• Strong understanding of quality management and process capability, with confidence translating prevention and right-first-time thinking into everyday behaviours.
• Experience implementing or operating automotive manufacturing standards and production systems, ideally including IATF 16949.
• Commercially minded judgement around budgeting, capital investment priorities and resource capacity planning.
• A coaching leadership style that builds capability, accountability and continuous improvement across cross-functional teams.

This Director of Manufacturing role is central to helping the leadership team align strategy and execution, supporting sustainable growth and operational excellence. By strengthening manufacturing capability, increasing customer readiness and promoting continuous improvement, you will help this company deliver on its goals while building a workplace culture that empowers teams to solve problems at source and learn fast. The Director of Manufacturing position also plays a key part in enterprise collaboration, ensuring operational input is credible and realistic when shaping bids, programme reviews and customer conversations.

Location:

The Director of Manufacturing role is based in the Oxfordshire region, with on-site presence required to lead teams and drive operational performance.

Interested?:

If a Director of Manufacturing role that blends operational excellence, leadership development and measurable improvement sounds like the next step, apply now and take the lead on building a manufacturing function ready for growth.

Your CV will be forwarded to Jonathan Lee Recruitment, a leading engineering and manufacturing recruitment consultancy established in 1978. The services advertised by Jonathan Lee Recruitment are those of an Employment Agency.
In order for your CV to be processed effectively, please ensure your name, email address, phone number and location (post code OR town OR county, as a minimum) are included.