Jim Shipley

Jim Shipley is Element Consulting's Strategic Relationship Manager for Federal and National Security, where he leads the firm's engagement with defense, aerospace, and national-security organizations modernizing how they manage engineering and manufacturing data.

Jim joined Element after a 15-year career at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where he rose to Project/Program Director overseeing an $85M+ production portfolio and served as the primary point of contact to the NNSA Federal Program Director for scope, schedule, and budget across production operations. He held full accountability for digital engineering execution — including the implementation and integration of PTC Windchill MPMLink — and was a primary liaison to the NNSA Digital Engineering Transformation Team, driving adoption of the digital engineering thread across national-security production programs.

His experience spans the full arc of high-consequence manufacturing: weapons production, high-explosives and energetics program management, flight-test modernization, and the production-planning and change-management frameworks that keep complex, highly regulated operations on schedule. Earlier in his career, Jim spent 15 years at Intel Corporation in thermal and mechanical engineering leadership roles, and he founded JCS Labs, an engineering consultancy specializing in advanced thermal management and precision systems.

Jim's work has been recognized with the LANL Distinguished Performance Award and multiple Defense Programs Awards of Excellence. He brings a rare combination to Element's clients: someone who has personally lived the digital-thread transformation from inside the customer's world, and who understands what it actually takes to connect engineering to execution in a mission-critical environment.