DescriptionThis position is on-site in Des Moines, Iowa.Key Duties and Responsibilities
Engineering Organization and Team Development
- Build, organize, mentor, and retain a high-performing multidisciplinary engineering team with clear ownership for new product development, product sustainment, and technical excellence.
- Develop engineering leaders and technical experts who can independently manage programs, make sound technical decisions, and collaborate across the business.
- Establish capacity plans, role clarity, resource allocation, succession plans, budgets, and development paths that support the product portfolio and long-term business strategy.
- Create a culture of accountability, curiosity, practical innovation, disciplined execution, continuous learning, and customer-focused problem solving.
- Lead through the team by setting direction, removing barriers, reviewing outcomes, and developing capability rather than becoming the primary individual contributor.
New Product Development and Commercialization
- Lead the engineering organization from product concept through design, prototyping, validation, industrialization, launch, and post-launch stabilization.
- Ensure disciplined execution of APQP, design reviews, verification and validation, risk management, change control, documentation, and manufacturing readiness.
- Guide the development of manufacturable products using sheet metal, electrical systems, refrigeration systems, embedded controllers, firmware, sensors, connectivity, and related technologies.
- Partner with Manufacturing and Supply Chain to ensure designs can be produced consistently, efficiently, safely, and at the required quality, volume, cost, and margin.
- Bring products to market with clear ownership, launch criteria, technical support plans, and feedback loops for rapid post-launch learning.
Product Sustainment and Continuous Improvement
- Build the team and operating model responsible for the long-term performance and sustainability of released products.
- Improve product quality, reliability, serviceability, manufacturability, availability, compliance, cost, and margin throughout the product lifecycle.
- Use customer feedback, warranty data, field service information, manufacturing performance, support trends, and product telemetry to identify and prioritize improvements.
- Lead root-cause problem solving, corrective action, value engineering, component lifecycle planning, obsolescence management, and technical debt reduction.
- Ensure existing products remain supportable, competitive, profitable, and aligned with changing customer and regulatory requirements.
Success Measures
- Engineering portfolio balance and delivery against committed priorities.
- New product development milestones, APQP gate completion, launch readiness, and time-to-market.
- Post-launch performance, product adoption, customer outcomes, and revenue or margin contribution.
- Quality, reliability, warranty, field issue, serviceability, and corrective-action trends.
- Cost reduction, value engineering, manufacturability, production efficiency, and product margin improvement.
- Hardware-software integration quality, release coordination, system validation, and connected-product performance.
- Team capability, leadership development, retention, succession readiness, and employee engagement.
- Product sustainment health, obsolescence risk, technical debt reduction, and lifecycle supportability.
RequirementsKnowledge, Skills, and Leadership Capabilities
- Proven leadership of multidisciplinary product engineering teams in a manufacturing environment.
- Demonstrated experience building teams and leaders that deliver through others.
- Experience bringing physical products from concept through industrialization, manufacturing, launch, and lifecycle support.
- Working knowledge of embedded controller devices, firmware, electrical systems, and connected-device architecture.
- Practical knowledge of sheet metal product development, design for manufacturability, tooling, fabrication, assembly, and production readiness.
- Experience with APQP, verification and validation, design controls, risk management, root-cause analysis, change control, and continuous improvement.
- Ability to connect mechanical, electrical, refrigeration, embedded, firmware, cloud, and software development into a coordinated product strategy.
- Strong business judgment with the ability to balance innovation, customer value, technical risk, cost, quality, margin, capacity, and speed.
- Clear executive, technical, customer, and cross-functional communication skills.
Education and Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or a related discipline. Equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
- Progressive engineering leadership experience in the development and manufacture of integrated electromechanical products.
- Demonstrated experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams.
- Being able to partner with software development teams to deliver integrated hardware and software products is strongly preferred.
