Why This Role Matters

As a CAD Administrator, you will be the backbone of engineering productivity across our fusion demonstration system. Engineers, designers, scientists, and technicians rely on our CAD ecosystem and PLM integration to rapidly iterate on complex mechanical and electrical assemblies. You will own the configuration, maintenance, optimization, and user support for our CAD tools and standard libraries — centered on PTC Creo and Windchill — ensuring our engineering team operates with maximum speed, accuracy, and efficiency. This is a high-impact role at the intersection of design engineering, IT, and PLM, enabling seamless hardware creation at startup speed.

What You'll Do

  • Administer, configure, and maintain our CAD software tools (Creo Parametric).
  • Manage CAD software licensing, user accounts, access permissions, server deployments, and software updates in partnership with IT and PLM Admin.
  • Establish, standardize, and maintain standard CAD libraries, seed files, drawing templates, start parts, and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) component catalogs.
  • Develop, document, and enforce CAD modeling best practices, layer standards, parametric modeling conventions, and drawing standards across the organization.
  • Provide technical support and troubleshooting for design engineers encountering CAD crashes, performance bottlenecks, workspace sync issues, or assembly corruptions.
  • Onboard and train design engineers, technicians, and contractors on company CAD standards, modeling workflows, and Windchill CAD integration.
  • Optimize CAD environment performance, including local vault cache configurations, workstation hardware recommendations, and graphics driver settings.
  • Spearhead the campaign to fully automate drawing creation and initial checking to increase engineering throughput in a phased approach

What You Bring

  • 4+ years of experience in CAD Administration, CAD System Engineering, or CAD/PLM Application Support in a hardware design/manufacturing environment.
  • Deep administrative expertise with major CAD platforms (e.g., PTC Creo Parametric, SolidWorks, Altium) and their system configuration tools.
  • Hands-on experience managing CAD-to-PLM integrations, specifically PTC Windchill CAD Data Management (PDMLink / Workgroup Managers).
  • Demonstrated experience building and managing CAD part libraries, start parts, design templates, and modeling standards.
  • Strong diagnostic and troubleshooting skills to resolve complex client-side CAD crashes, file dependencies, and dataset integrity issues.
  • Proactive, "DOer," and self-starter capable of navigating the ambiguity of a first-of-a-kind research project.
  • Excellent communication and customer-service mindset to support and influence cross-functional teams of scientists and engineers.

Bonus Points For

  • Experience with CAD automation, scripting (e.g., Creo Toolkit, Python, VB.net), or macro development to streamline repetitive design tasks.
  • Experience managing CAD/PLM environments in a high-complexity hardware startup or national laboratory environment (e.g., SNL, LANL, LLNL).