The Advanced Product Development Leader leads a multidisciplinary engineering team to deliver stronger technical outcomes through disciplined product development practices, technology roadmap development, and continuous capability building. This role partners closely with Product Management to align market opportunities with technical readiness, identifies portfolio gaps and paths to close them, and coaches engineers to solve increasingly complex problems with greater rigor and independence. The manager also ensures product definitions transition smoothly into Product Realization through clear technical direction, strong upstream execution, and effective cross-functional alignment.. This role is well-suited for a technically strong engineering leader who has successfully transitioned into people leadership and is motivated to expand their impact across team development, technology direction, and engineering execution.

Essential Functions:

• Lead product development from ideation through concept design freeze, ensuring opportunities are translated into technically sound, well-defined product concepts that are ready for handoff to the Product Realization team.

• Build and lead a high-performing engineering team by developing technical capability, strengthening problem-solving, and raising independent decision-making across the group.

• Support and advance technology roadmaps by identifying portfolio gaps, connecting technical themes across products, and helping shape paths to close them through development, sourcing, or partnership.

• Partner with Product Management to align market needs with technical readiness, ensuring product opportunities are grounded in achievable, scalable engineering solutions.

• Drive disciplined product development execution by implementing and reinforcing standard work, tools, and methods that improve consistency, quality, and speed.

• Elevate technical rigor through active engagement in design reviews, problem framing, and tradeoff decisions—contributing selectively to unblock teams, strengthen solutions, and model strong engineering practice while maintaining clear ownership within the team.

• Ensure strong transition to Product Realization by delivering clear, complete product definitions and maintaining alignment on intent, risks, and readiness.

• Connect work across projects and products by identifying common technical themes, risks, and opportunities to improve reuse, consistency, and long-term scalability.

• Strengthen engineering execution through partnership with PMO, ensuring plans, resources, and technical expectations are realistic and aligned.

• Extend capability through external awareness and partnerships by engaging selectively with customers, universities, and external technologies to inform roadmap and supplement team capability.

Critical Success Factors:

• Accelerates product development by improving engineering rigor—resulting in clearer requirements, stronger technical definition, and earlier risk identification that reduces rework and speeds transition to Product Realization.
• Strengthens the team into deeper technical owners – Team thinks beyond immediate problems, applying broader product, discipline, and technology context to deliver more robust solutions.

Education & Experience Required:   

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering required; Master’s degree preferred. 

• 7+ years of progressive experience in product development.  Multidisciplinary experience with electromechanical products is required.

• Demonstrated progression from strong individual contributor into people or technical leadership, with experience developing others, improving engineering practices, and guiding teams through complex work.

• Strong engineering foundation across multidisciplinary product development, with the ability to engage in technical discussions, connect tradeoffs, and contribute to system-level thinking.

• Experience contributing to product development efforts from concept through execution, including exposure to improving technical rigor, tools, or working methods.

• Demonstrated ability to mature early-stage product ideas into technically credible, well-scoped concepts by clarifying requirements, surfacing key risks, and strengthening concept definition prior to handoff into downstream realization.

• Experience collaborating cross-functionally, particularly with Product Management and downstream execution teams, to align technical feasibility, requirements, and delivery expectations.

• Demonstrated problem-solving and decision-making capability, with the ability to work through ambiguity, support tradeoff decisions, and help teams move forward.

• Working knowledge of core engineering design tools used across the team, with the ability to navigate and review mechanical and electrical design outputs and understand how MCAD and ECAD systems interact to support cohesive product development. Familiarity with SolidWorks and Altium is preferred.

Additional experience considered a plus:

• Exposure to technology road mapping, portfolio gap identification, or platform-level thinking

• Experience with process/tool implementation or continuous improvement initiatives

• Familiarity with external technologies, partners, or academic collaboration

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