Order Manager
Redstone Manufacturing | Remote, US-based | Full-time | Reports to the President
About Redstone
Redstone Manufacturing sources custom metal parts through an overseas supply chain (China, Taiwan, India) for customers in defense, consumer electronics, industrial equipment, and automotive aftermarket. We are a small, fast-moving team with people in the US, India, Taiwan and China. You will have real ownership from day one.
Why this role exists
Once an order is won, the work of landing it on time, to spec, and correctly documented currently has no single owner, so it defaults to the President. This role takes that over. You sit in the middle between customer and supplier as the central hub for roughly 60 open purchase orders at any time. Customers come to you for dates. Suppliers, freight forwarders, and our operations specialist come to you for decisions. Orders keep moving without climbing to the top.
This is an ownership seat. We need a driver: the person who expedites the moment a date is threatened, not after it slips, and who calls the customer before the customer calls us. Put simply: whether our customers are happy with how their orders go is your number, and it covers everything operational an account needs, not just the orders themselves.
What you will own
• The operational customer relationship. You are each customer’s point of contact for everything in production, and the owner of their operational happiness. You run a monthly check-in with each account’s operations contact, own all ship date communication, and deliver bad news with a recovery plan attached. You also handle the account work around the orders: documentation and cert requests, sample sends, quality communications, forecast and inventory conversations, and payment follow-up. Pricing and strategy stay with account owners; everything else the account needs is yours.
• Inbound customer PO review. Every customer PO is checked against the quote before acceptance: price, quantity, drawing revision, date feasibility, terms. Mismatches go back before they become orders. Anything referencing a controlled or defense-adjacent drawing gets flagged for export screening before a document moves overseas.
• Production schedules and ship dates. You own the customer-facing date on every open order. On established parts, you also drive the supplier side: POs through production, expediting, and holding committed dates. On parts still in development, our engineering lead drives the supplier through the first production shipment, then hands the part to you with a full documentation pack.
• Supplier communication and follow-up. All routine supplier communication on production parts. You hold suppliers to committed dates, push back on unjustified price or schedule changes, and escalate pattern problems early. Our standard is short, numbered requests with explicit confirm-by dates.
• Logistics and trade documentation. Freight decisions within set limits (air versus sea, consolidation, carrier selection), bookings with forwarders, shipping documents, HTS code verification, customs coordination, and reconciling shipping invoices against quotes.
• Verification. The heart of the job. You check invoices against orders before they go out. You spot-check HTS codes without being told. You notice when a packing list, an invoice, and a PO disagree. You build verification steps nobody asked for, because you have seen what unchecked details cost.
• AP and AR oversight. Supplier invoices are matched against the PO and the shipment before payment approval. You watch the receivables aging weekly and chase overdue invoices as part of the customer relationship, escalating to the account owner at 30 days. Our operations specialist and bookkeeper process; you review, catch, and chase.
• People and cadence. You direct the daily work of our Philippines-based operations specialist (POs, invoices, shipment notices) and actively develop her toward greater ownership. You run a standing twice-weekly evening sync with our China suppliers and coordinate inspection timing with our China-based quality team. You run the weekly orders and shipments review and own its action items to closure.
Decision authority
You operate inside written guardrails so you can act without waiting: freight choices, reasonable supplier schedule and cost changes, reshipments, and the routine calls that keep orders on track. Above the limits, you come to the President with a recommendation, not just a question.
Hours
Our suppliers are in China, Taiwan, and India. Core hours are US-based, with an additional one-to-two hour evening work period Sunday through Thursday to coordinate with overseas suppliers. This is a fixed requirement of the role, not occasional overlap, and we will confirm availability during the first screen.