Staff CNC Programmer
manufacturing › Machine Shop · P5 — P5 — Expert Professional · Individual contributor
Expert-level individual contributor who designs, programs, and optimizes complex CNC machining processes across the shop.
No pay estimate for this profile yet.
Ask about this role
grounded in this role's JobFrame record + structureDownload this job's description (markdown) → derived live from this record.
Key statistics
The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.
5 of 8
Track
Individual contributor
Family rungs priced
—
—
Coordinates
2 / 4 spaces
pay@2 · 2026-07
What this role is
Expert-level individual contributor who designs, programs, and optimizes complex CNC machining processes across the shop. At the Expert Professional (P5) level, the role owns multiple systems or a technical domain, establishes the approach, and drives org / multi-team outcomes. Leads cross-team technical initiatives.
What this level does
- Improves an entire manufacturing process or product line — driving iterative, trial-and-proven changes to tooling, sequencing, and machine capability that others adopt shop-wide
- Acts as the shop's authority on technical execution and problem-solving, resolving the hardest machining and tolerance-stack problems by disciplined experiment at the machine
- Establishes proven-out standard setups, tooling catalogs, and speeds/feeds libraries that become the shop's default methods for a class of parts
- Leads manufacturing teams and complex, multi-machine projects, coordinating machinists and engineers to deliver debugged production processes
- Mentors senior machinists and sets the technical benchmark for quality, capability, and repeatability across the shop
- Knowledge applied
- Applies expert, hard-won process knowledge to improve entire manufacturing processes and product lines through disciplined trial-and-proof, building the shop's standard methods.
- Complexity & problem solving
- Solves the shop's most demanding machining and tolerance problems by iterative experiment within an accepted machining tradition, with high independence.
- Collaboration & interaction
- Leads teams and multi-machine projects, is the recognized technical authority others adopt methods from, and mentors senior machinists.
- Typical experience
- 12+ years; extensive machining expertise across processes and materials.
Skills at this level
- Machine operation and setup
- — Sets up and troubleshoots mills, lathes, drill presses, grinders, hones, and CNC centers, applying good manufacturing practices and selecting tooling and machining resources appropriate to the part being made.
- CNC programming (G-code)
- — Generates and modifies programmatic G-code instructions that the machine interprets to cut components, applying knowledge of speeds and feeds, machine tooling, work-holding, and material behavior.
- Blueprint and GD&T reading
- — Reads blueprints and Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing callouts to interpret datums, position, profile, and dimensional specifications for a part before machining and inspection.
- Precision measurement and inspection
- — Reads instrumentation and gauges to measure machined dimensions within a .001 tolerance, performing first-article and in-process inspections to confirm parts meet the print.
- Machining mathematics
- — Uses trigonometry and shop math to follow technical drawings and calculate part dimensions, tool positions, machine speeds, and feed rates for precision work.
- Machining process optimization
- — Revises speeds, feeds, toolpaths, sequencing, and fixturing in collaboration with engineers to reduce cycle time and scrap and improve the capability of an entire machining process.
- Fault diagnosis and troubleshooting
- — Diagnoses machining problems by isolating root cause across program, machine, tooling, fixture, and material, using logic and reasoning to weigh alternative fixes.
- Tooling and equipment maintenance
- — Maintains machine tools and manages tooling inventory, monitoring cutter wear and equipment condition to keep parts within tolerance and machines running reliably.
- Fabrication and part repair
- — Fabricates, reconstructs, and repairs mechanical parts and tooling from detailed blueprints, including welding and manual finishing where the routing is not fully defined.
- Failure prediction through analysis
- — Predicts where tolerance stacks, thermal growth, tool deflection, and fixturing will cause a part to fail before it is cut, so high-consequence jobs run correctly the first time.
- Shop mentorship and training
- — Trains junior and senior machinists on setup, programming, and inspection, and establishes proven standard methods that others in the shop adopt.
Model-authored from 21 retrieved sources, then adversarially reviewed by an independent judge panel and held to a minimum-evidence floor before publication. Distinct from corpus-extracted content, which is labelled as such.
Scan / share this profile
Put this on a job description, posting, poster, book, or catalog — it opens this canonical profile.
https://jobframe.global/profile/jf_machine_shop%3A%3AP5
As of · 2026-07-30
Edition · canon-v2@2.1.0-complete
Source · canon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)
Act on this profile
Guides
A guided career narrative for this exact profile — pilot clusters first.
Assessments
Level-scoped evaluation criteria, BARS frames, and structured-interview dimensions — from this profile's canon + O*NET.
Free
Assemble a validated assessment battery for a role from the library's pieces.
Free
Past-behavior-first structured interview questions, anchored rating scales, and panel-scoring instructions — from this profile's canon + O*NET.
Free
The complete work-products kit for one canonical job profile: level-scoped evaluation criteria with BARS frames, structured-interview dimensions and guide, performance criteria, and goal/scorecard templates — all canon-grounded and basis-labeled.
$29
Work-products kits for every level and focus in one job family — the hiring-manager shape: assess, interview, and set goals across the whole ladder consistently.
$99
Every work-products kit across all canonical profiles, refreshed as source editions land.
$49/mo
Every work-products kit across all canonical profiles, refreshed as source editions land. Annual billing (two months free).
$490/yr
JobFrame Enterprise
One job framework. Every talent decision.
The unified, transparent framework your hiring, pay, performance, promotion, learning, and management decisions all build on — recomputed into your org's own maintained edition.
Recalculate for your org