What You'll Own
Engineering Team & Organization
• Lead, develop, and hold accountable the full Kinetyc engineering team - AMEs, ME, EE, and CAE - as both a manager and a coach
• Define team structure, roles, and growth paths that scale with Kinetyc's customer base and market expansion
• Build a culture of technical ownership, continuous improvement, and collaborative problem-solving within the engineering function
• Recruit and develop engineering talent in alignment with Kinetyc's HMLV model and frontier market focus
Customer & Product Engineering
• Own the technical relationship with key customers from initial engagement through production - as a senior engineering peer, not a support function
• Lead DFM strategy, design reviews, systems integration assessments, and technical risk identification across the customer portfolio
• Design and govern the customer engineering onboarding process - defining standards, timelines, and accountability for successful product launches
• Translate customer design intent into executable manufacturing plans; identify and resolve gaps between customer expectations and Kinetyc capabilities early
• Represent Kinetyc's technical capability in high-stakes customer conversations - executive briefings, site audits, design reviews
Strategic Engineering Leadership
• Serve as a member of Kinetyc's senior leadership team - contributing to business strategy, not just engineering execution
• Own the engineering roadmap: capabilities to build, tools to invest in, processes to formalize, and certifications to pursue
• Lead Kinetyc's engineering compliance posture - including CMMC Level 2, DD2345, ISO 9001:2015 stewardship, and future defense or regulatory requirements
• Drive FLEXembly™ innovation initiatives from the engineering side - identifying where customer insight and manufacturing capability can create proprietary solutions
• Evaluate build vs. buy decisions for engineering tools, capacity, and partnerships
What You've Done
• 12-20 years of engineering experience, with at least 5 years leading engineering teams in a manufacturing or product development environment
• Managed and developed engineers across multiple disciplines - you've built teams, not just led projects
• Deep background in mechanical, electrical, or systems engineering; hands-on experience with complex electromechanical or assembled products
• Owned customer-facing technical relationships at a senior level - you've been in the room when the stakes were high and the specs weren't finished
• Worked inside or alongside contract manufacturers, Tier 1/2 suppliers, or HMLV production environments
• Led or contributed meaningfully to engineering compliance programs - ISO, CMMC, ITAR, AS9100, or equivalent
• Operated effectively in environments without perfect information - you've made good calls with incomplete data and owned the outcome
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a peer with commercial, operations, and finance leadership - not just within the engineering function
What Makes You Different
• You build engineers, not just products - you take the development of your team as seriously as the quality of the work
• You think at the system level and act at the detail level - comfortable in a strategic conversation in the morning and a root cause analysis in the afternoon
• You ask the uncomfortable question early instead of absorbing the problem late
• You treat customer relationships as long-term partnerships, not transactions - and you bring your team along in that mindset
• You know how to protect engineering capacity for strategic work while keeping the operation running
• You're comfortable being accountable - to your team, to customers, and to the business
This Director of Engineering role sits at the center of that mission. You'll report directly to the President/GM, lead a capable and growing engineering team, and help define what Kinetyc's engineering function looks like as we scale. If you want to build something - not just manage something - this is the job.
