Product Cost Engineer, Capital Equipment

Meta’s Reality Labs builds hardware and systems behind the AR Glasses portfolio, including the capital equipment used from early process concepts through ramp. In this onsite role in Sunnyvale, you will help protect the financial performance of those investments by setting targets, modeling costs, and leading governance across the full capex lifecycle with cross-functional partners.

What you’ll do

• Establish and continuously refine capital cost targets at both program and portfolio level, then cascade them to line, station, and equipment; drive Process, Tooling, Test, and Sourcing teams to meet the targets.
• Develop should-cost models for capital equipment and validate supplier quotes by decomposing pricing to confirm quotes are cost-justified before commitments.
• Partner with Sourcing on equipment supplier strategy, Supplier Plan of Record (SPOR), and negotiation strategy; provide should-cost benchmarks, competitive alternatives, multi-program bundling leverage, and payment and milestone terms.
• Own reporting and management of capital expenditure across the AR Glasses portfolio, including tooling, fixtures, automation, test and metrology equipment, and factory infrastructure, and track flow-through to Total Cost per Unit via depreciation and capex-per-unit.
• Work with Hardware and Manufacturing Engineering at a technical level to find capital reduction opportunities such as station consolidation, cycle time and takt improvements, fixture simplification, test time reduction, and utilization gains.
• Define and execute an intergenerational re-use strategy by assessing the installed base for carry-forward across generations and programs, quantifying manual versus automation trade-offs, shaping design and process commonality to maximize reuse, and tracking realized reuse against budget.
• Lead cross-functional capital reviews focused on actual versus target capex, utilization, re-use, and risks and opportunities; assess capital impacts of design, process, automation, and test changes.
• Support capital approval and governance with Capex Sourcing and Finance, including business cases, depreciation treatment, and redeployment or disposition of idle assets.
• Codify capital cost management best practices into scalable processes and documentation.

Minimum qualifications

• BS in Manufacturing & Operations, Industrial, Mechanical or Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience in capital cost management, manufacturing/process engineering, tooling, or automation roles for hardware products.
• Experience building capital or capacity models (equipment cost, UPH, cycle time, OEE, utilization, staffing) to support investment decisions.
• Knowledge of Operations and Supply Chain, with demonstrated effective communication skills.
• Experience collaborating with stakeholders across engineering, sourcing, and finance to align trade-offs between cost, schedule, and technical requirements.
• Experience applying analytical and problem-solving methods to cost, capital, or supply chain challenges and communicating findings to cross-functional stakeholders.
• Experience with equipment re-use, redeployment, or intergenerational tooling strategy across product generations.
• Familiarity with capital governance, depreciation, payback/NPV analysis, and asset disposition.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience adhering to and implementing responsible, ethical AI practices (risk assessment, bias mitigation, quality and accuracy reviews).
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize or redesign workflows and drive measurable impact (efficiency gains, quality improvements).
• Demonstrated ongoing AI skill development (prompt/context engineering, agent orchestration) and staying current with emerging AI technologies.
• Experience with complex capital equipment, including new line bring-up and ramp.
• Master’s degree or MBA in a relevant field (Engineering, Operations, Business).
• 10+ years of experience in capital cost, manufacturing engineering, or product cost management roles in hardware technology products.
• Background in Manufacturing, Operations, or Engineering.

Location and compensation

• Location: Sunnyvale, CA (onsite)
• Salary: USD 168,000 - 234,000 per year

Benefits

• Bonus
• Equity
• Benefits