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KLA-Adjacent Local Roles

Weekday job-search notes for Ventura-area employment roles similar to Gordon's KLA experience: senior technical, systems, engineering management, and program leadership roles at nearby employers. Public page; separate from the password-protected wiki copy.

Target Criteria

Ventura-area roles, ideally Ventura/Camarillo/Thousand Oaks or otherwise a practical commute from Ventura.
Best fits: senior/staff/principal software or systems roles, engineering management, technical program/product leadership, manufacturing systems, and operations-technology leadership.
Priority employers: Amgen, Northrop Grumman, Teledyne, Meissner, Valex, Guitar Center, and similar local engineering/manufacturing employers.
Exclude or clearly flag: adtech, Verilog/VHDL/FPGA/firmware-heavy roles, active-security-clearance-required roles, and in-office/hybrid Agoura Hills roles. Truly remote Agoura Hills roles are acceptable only if confirmed remote.

Monday, June 29, 2026

Today's highlights: The best new/confirmed leads are still centered on Amgen Thousand Oaks. The strongest KLA-adjacent role remains Associate Director Business Performance for S/4HANA enterprise transformation/program execution. A newly surfaced CD&A Associate Director, Agentic AI Business Solutions is also interesting because it combines GenAI delivery, stakeholder management, rollout, adoption, and measurable business value; it is hybrid 2–3 days/week in Thousand Oaks. Principal Manufacturing Systems Engineer remains the cleanest operations-technology fit. Outside Amgen, Meissner Senior Manager of Applications Engineering remains the best local engineering-management/salary match, while Valex Global Quality Manager is a new pure-Ventura senior manufacturing/quality leadership lead. Guitar Center still has plausible senior software/network leadership roles in Westlake Village. Northrop Grumman Camarillo and Teledyne Camarillo/Thousand Oaks are watchlist only today because visible roles are clearance-oriented and/or embedded-heavy.

Search notes: Checked Amgen Thousand Oaks engineering, information systems, AI/data, program, and transformation postings; Meissner Camarillo; Valex Ventura; Guitar Center Westlake Village technology roles; Northrop Grumman Camarillo; and Teledyne/FLIR Workday public search snippets. Salary ranges are direct posting ranges when visible; otherwise explicitly marked as third-party/search-snippet estimates or not visible in extracted posting content.

Best-fit / worth attention now

Amgen — Associate Director Business Performance

Top local program leadThousand Oaks / Remote-labeled page contextEnterprise program / SAP S/4HANA transformation$151,102.80–$204,433.20

Strong senior program-management fit: enterprise transformation, PMO governance, risk/issue/performance management, go-live readiness, cross-workstream dependencies, executive dashboards, budget/resource tracking, change communications, and Agile/SAFe software-development exposure. This is one of the cleanest translations of KLA systems/program leadership into local enterprise technology transformation.

Direct posting

Amgen — CD&A Associate Director, Agentic AI Business Solutions

★ New AI/program leadThousand OaksFlexible commuter / hybrid 2–3 days per week$150,858.85–$204,103.15

Good AI-enabled business-systems fit: owns execution lifecycle for Agentic AI / GenAI business solutions, including design, implementation, rollout, training, adoption, change management, value realization, and executive stakeholder communication. Less semiconductor-equipment specific, but the combination of software delivery, applied AI, program execution, and business process adoption is highly relevant.

Direct posting

Amgen — Principal Manufacturing Systems Engineer / Principal Manufacturing Technology and Information Systems Engineer

Still strongest ops-technology fitThousand Oaks among locationsManufacturing automation / information systemsSalary not visible in extracted direct page

Best KLA-adjacent operations-technology role: manufacturing automation and information-systems leadership, program/project execution, MES/DeltaV/Rockwell/Aveva PI-style manufacturing systems, product ownership, vendor/resource planning, compliance, lifecycle management, and senior-leadership communication.

Direct posting

Amgen — Senior Manager – Drug Substance Technology & Engineering

Thousand OaksOn-siteUp to 10% travel$148,715.15–$201,202.85

Serious people/technical leadership role: leads downstream process engineers, manufacturing support, technology transfer, process optimization, continuous improvement, cGMP execution, and cross-functional work with Quality, Manufacturing, Regulatory, Validation, Supply Chain, and site/network teams. Less software/KLA-toolchain aligned, but strong senior engineering management.

Direct posting

Meissner — Senior Manager of Applications Engineering (Bioprocessing Design)

Still worth attentionCamarilloOn-site / local$168,600–$228,900Senior engineering management

Strong local engineering-management lead: senior applications-engineering management in Camarillo, multiple AE teams, subordinate managers/supervisors, custom bioprocessing solutions, regulated-industry engineering, workflow/organization scaling, metrics, resource utilization, and cross-functional strategy. Excellent local commute and salary; less software-centered than Amgen technology roles.

Direct posting · Meissner careers

Valex Corp — Global Quality Manager

★ New Ventura senior leadVenturaManufacturing / semiconductor-adjacent quality$125,000–$175,000 plus incentiveTravel as needed

Best pure-Ventura senior leadership lead found today. Owns global quality system/product quality across locations, incoming material qualification, customer complaints/material returns, quality support for internal departments/customers, and quality-system execution. Semiconductor and ultra-high-purity products experience is a plus, making it locally relevant even though it is quality/manufacturing leadership rather than software.

Valex employment page

Worth a look, but less directly KLA-adjacent

Amgen — Senior Director – BioIntelligence

★ New high-comp AI leadership leadThousand Oaks page contextAI/ML for biologics discovery$225,624–$305,256

Very senior AI/data/scientific leadership role leading machine-learning and data-science teams for predictive modeling, generative AI, and biologics discovery platforms. Flag as a domain-stretch role: compensation and leadership level are excellent, but it likely expects deep computational biology / biological-systems ML credibility.

Direct posting

Amgen — Sr Engineer, Drug Product Process Engineering / Visual Inspection

★ New active postingThousand OaksSome US/international travel may be required$115,494.60–$156,257.40

Manufacturing/process support role for commercial and clinical manufacturing, new product introduction, ongoing manufacture, and visual-inspection defect creation. Useful operations/process-engineering adjacency, but it is more biotech process engineering than senior software/systems leadership.

Direct posting

Amgen — Contract Development & Manufacturing Senior Manager

Thousand Oaks page contextExternal supply / CDMO-CRO program leadershipUp to 20% domestic/international travelSalary not visible in extracted direct page

Good senior program/operations management option: leads complex cross-functional external development and manufacturing programs, supplier selection/onboarding, SOW/proposal management, risk/escalations, quality systems, budgets, purchase orders, forecasting, technical transfer, and operational excellence. Less software-centered, but credible for program leadership.

Direct posting

Guitar Center — Principal Software Engineer

Westlake VillageCorporate Office$150,000–$190,000Job ID 32131

Potentially useful principal IC software role in a practical commute zone. Caveat: retail/platform context rather than semiconductor equipment or regulated manufacturing; confirm architecture scope, manager expectations, and hybrid cadence directly.

Direct posting

Guitar Center — Sr. Manager, Network Engineering

Westlake VillagePractical Ventura commute$150,000–$192,000Job ID 31747

Legitimate senior tech management role: leads/evolves network engineering for data centers, cloud platforms, and enterprise operations. Good leadership scope and salary, though network infrastructure is less KLA-adjacent than manufacturing systems/software.

Direct posting · Guitar Center IT/Technology jobs

Valex Corp — Manufacturing Engineer

VenturaManufacturing/process engineering$75,000–$95,000Below senior target level

Good local semiconductor-adjacent manufacturing/process role, but likely too junior/low-comp for the main target. Responsibilities include identifying, evaluating, designing, and implementing manufacturing processes/equipment and supporting operations and quality departments.

Valex employment page

Flagged / likely poor fit

Northrop Grumman — Camarillo Systems / Project / Embedded roles

CamarilloSystems/Principal Systems Engineer visible range: $91,800–$137,600 / $114,000–$171,000Clearance required or contingent on customer approvalEmbedded/firmware-heavy postings present

Nearby employer and potentially strong compensation, but current Camarillo results should not be prioritized: systems/project roles are defense/clearance-oriented and software roles skew embedded. Only revisit if a specific posting does not require active clearance and is not firmware/FPGA-centered.

Northrop Grumman Camarillo jobs · Systems/Principal Systems Engineer posting

Teledyne/FLIR — System / Software Architect – Embedded Platforms (Linux / Android)

Camarillo / Thousand Oaks Workday snippetsEmbedded-platform focusSalary not visible in public snippet

Teledyne remains strategically relevant locally, but today's visible Workday snippets point to embedded Linux/Android architecture rather than a clean senior software-management, systems, or program role. Keep watching Teledyne/FLIR for senior systems/software, engineering manager, and program manager roles; treat Workday search snippets and third-party salary estimates as unverified.

Teledyne careers · Official Teledyne/FLIR job search

Excluded commute/location notes

Agoura Hills in-office or hybrid roles remain excluded for daily commute reasons. Remote Agoura Hills roles can be considered only if the posting is explicitly remote.
Adtech/product-growth roles, Verilog/VHDL/FPGA roles, firmware-heavy embedded roles, and active-security-clearance-required roles should not be treated as best-fit leads.

Standing Search Links

Last updated by Hermes Agent: Monday, June 29, 2026. Salary ranges are direct-posting ranges unless marked as third-party/search-snippet estimates or not visible in extracted posting content.