Principal Machinist
manufacturing › Machine Shop · P6 — P6 — Principal Professional · Individual contributor
Serves as the top technical authority for CNC machining and robotic production processes across the shop.
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6 of 8
Track
Individual contributor
Family rungs priced
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Coordinates
2 / 4 spaces
pay@2 · 2026-07
What this role is
Serves as the top technical authority for CNC machining and robotic production processes across the shop. At the Principal Professional (P6) level, the role owns organization-wide architecture and the hardest problems, strategic, open-ended problems shaping the technical future, and drives organization-wide. Recognized authority; multiplies many teams.
What this level does
- Sets the machining strategy and capability direction for the shop or across shops, deciding which technologies, tolerances, and part families the organization can commit to
- Replaces trial-and-error with analysis — predicting where tolerance stacks, thermal growth, tool deflection, and fixturing will fail before a job is cut so the process is right the first time
- Owns the process assumptions that the whole team relies on, arbitrating cross-discipline trade-offs between design intent, machinability, cost, and inspection
- Transitions into leadership and technical-support authority, defining the standards, training, and process governance that machinists and engineers work to
- Serves as the final technical escalation for the most consequential or highest-value parts, where a scrapped component or missed tolerance carries major cost or safety consequence
- Knowledge applied
- Applies field-shaping judgment to define machining capability and predict failure through analysis — tolerance stacks, thermal growth, tool deflection — before cutting, getting it right the first time.
- Complexity & problem solving
- Resolves conflicting cross-discipline trade-offs on incomplete information and sets the process assumptions the whole team relies on for the highest-consequence parts.
- Collaboration & interaction
- Influences shop and organizational direction, is the final technical escalation, and provides governance, standards, and mentorship across machinists and engineers.
- Typical experience
- 15+ years; principal-level shop authority, typically having moved into leadership and technical-support roles.
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.
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As of · 2026-07-30
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