Industrial / Manufacturing Cost Estimation Consultant

Contract | Part-time | Remote | Mid-senior level

We're looking for an experienced Industrial / Manufacturing Cost Estimation Consultant to collaborate with us in validating and strengthening the knowledge architecture of our AI-powered estimation engine. At Naya, we're building a design-led, AI-powered platform that connects product development workflows, from 3D design to costing, planning, and manufacturing conversations. Our estimation engine helps teams generate early-stage manufacturing cost insights from 3D models and related inputs

The ideal candidate brings real-world validation, domain rigor, and deep Industrial / Manufacturing costing knowledge into the system, to help advance the estimation engine to become pinpoint accurate and consistent.

The Role

This is not a traditional in-house costing job. This is about shaping how cost intelligence is structured inside an AI-powered platform. The goal is to translate expert judgment into deterministic systems, where the same product, estimated multiple times, returns the same structure and prices within a tight tolerance.

You will help us:

• Document. Build structured skill-based knowledge files that define what accurate Industrial / Manufacturing cost estimation requires. This should include decision rules, step-by-step decision logic breakdowns, benchmarks, assumptions, and other relevant material that help map inputs to costs.
• Refine. Upgrade our estimation methodology with frameworks and industry best practices.
• Shape User Experience. Define and sequence the steps that reflect how your industry costing process works, ensuring the end-to-end flow is logical, fast, and easy to navigate for teams using the platform.
• Review. Stress-test AI-generated cost estimations across materials, processes, tooling, labor, and overhead and identify where the system's logic diverges from how an expert would actually reason.
• Validate. Conduct structured testing, constructing a reference product set, generating estimates against known actuals, and iterating on the skill-based documentation to meet accuracy and repeatability targets.
• Strengthen trust. Contribute to case studies, structured reviews, and credibility-building insights that increase confidence in AI-assisted costing.

You will work closely with product and leadership, through knowledge-capture sessions and async document review, to ensure our estimation engine reflects real-world manufacturing logic.

What You Bring(Core requirements)

• A minimum of 3-5 years of hands-on experience in product costing or manufacturing cost estimation within the Industrial / Manufacturing industry is required.
• Demonstrated experience building BOM-based costing models with explicit rules for how inputs map to costs, including material yield, labor time, overhead allocation, and tooling amortization.
• Experience building standardized estimation templates or RFQ benchmarking tools.
• Strong working knowledge of materials, fabrication processes, tooling, supply chain dynamics, and value engineering.
• Understanding of rate data origins, published indexes, internal benchmarking, direct quoting, and can articulate provenance, volatility, and confidence level of each number.
• Experience working with engineering and technical teams to translate verbal process knowledge and decision rules into documented form.
• Comfort reviewing 3D models or CAD-driven inputs as costing triggers.

(Vertical Specific knowledge)

• Fluency in industrial product cost structures: machined components, fabricated assemblies, castings, and weldments, and the ability to identify dominant cost drivers from a part's geometry and volume.
• Hands-on experience with process-specific cost logic, including CNC machining, metal fabrication, casting, and surface treatment as separate line items with distinct labor and overhead profiles.
• Working knowledge of industrial material pricing, including structural steel, aluminum extrusions, and stainless grades, and how commodity indexes and lead times affect cost or availability.
• Familiarity with make-vs-buy analysis in industrial contexts, including when volume, tolerance requirements, and logistics make in-house machining vs domestic vs offshore outsourcing the right call.
• Understanding of regional sourcing benchmarks, including domestic, nearshore, and offshore trade-offs for machined and fabricated components, and how tolerance and compliance requirements influence geography selection.

Who You Are

• Strategic. You think in frameworks.
• Rigor-driven. Assumptions matter to you. You care about the difference between a range and a keyed lookup.
• Clear communicator. You can explain complex costing logic simply, how a number was derived, and what inputs change it.
• Collaborative. You’re comfortable working with product and engineering teams.
• Curious. You’re interested in how AI can enhance, and not replace, expert judgment.

Engagement DetailsPhase 1: Knowledge capture and validation.

Structured sync sessions and active async communications will cover vertical scope, process steps, rate data, and cross-checks.

Phase 2: Refinement and stress-testing.

Enhance skill files, redline data, and perform multiple validation passes against reference product sets, iterating towards low variance, high accuracy, and consistent results across repeated cost estimations.

Review the evaluation assignment:

https://naya.studio/site/69e6ec1305f0a4aa599ddae5

Learn more about Estimation AI by Naya: https://naya.studio/estimation

Try the Estimation AI Sandbox: https://naya.studio/ai-estimation-enterprise

If you’re excited about shaping the future of AI-powered cost estimation, we’d love to connect. Please share your resume to jimmy@naya.studio and CC vivek@naya.studio.