Department: Engineering
Reports To: Director of Design Engineering
Location: Columbia, MD
Employment Type: Full-Time

About the Role

The Engineering Manager - Design Engineering is responsible for the day-to-day leadership and execution of design engineering activities across assigned customer projects and product lines. This role manages the design engineering team, translates project requirements into accurate and manufacturable designs, and ensures engineering deliverables are completed in accordance with project schedules, technical standards, and quality expectations.

Reporting to the Director of Design Engineering, the Engineering Manager provides hands-on leadership across engineering planning, workload allocation, design reviews, customer submittals, fabrication drawings, and engineering bills of material. The position serves as the primary point of escalation for design execution issues and works closely with

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Execution

- Manage the day-to-day execution of design engineering work across multiple concurrent projects.
- Translate approved customer requirements, specifications, layouts, and design criteria into complete engineering deliverables.
- Develop and maintain detailed engineering schedules aligned with customer approvals, procurement requirements, and manufacturing dates.
- Ensure design packages, models, customer submittals, fabrication drawings, and engineering BOMs are completed accurately and on time.
- Monitor scheduled versus actual completion dates and implement recovery plans when deliverables fall behind.
- Identify technical, resource, and schedule risks early and escalate them with clear recommendations.
- Lead technical problem-solving during design, procurement, fabrication, assembly, and installation.
- Ensure engineering changes are properly evaluated, documented, approved, and communicated to affected stakeholders.

Team Leadership

- Lead, coach, and develop design engineers, designers, and engineering leads.
- Assign work based on project priority, technical complexity, capacity, and individual capability.
- Establish clear ownership, deadlines, and expectations for every engineering deliverable.
- Conduct regular workload, project-status, and individual performance reviews.
- Provide timely feedback and address performance, responsiveness, quality, or accountability concerns.
- Identify skills gaps and develop appropriate training and development plans.
- Support recruitment, onboarding, succession planning, and organizational development for the design engineering function.
- Build a culture of urgency, technical rigor, collaboration, and ownership.

Design Quality and Governance

- Establish and enforce consistent design practices, review procedures, checklists, and release controls.
- Ensure designs comply with customer requirements, internal engineering standards, applicable codes, and manufacturing capabilities.
- Confirm that structural connections and load-bearing design decisions are reviewed and approved by Structural Engineering before release.
- Ensure customer comments and design changes are fully incorporated and closed before final approval.
- Maintain appropriate peer-review and approval requirements based on project risk and complexity.
- Reduce design errors, omissions, rework, and late-stage changes through effective front-end planning and review.
- Support the standardization of designs, components, assemblies, and engineering documentation while accommodating project-specific requirements.

Engineering BOM and Release Management

- Ensure engineering BOMs are complete, accurate, and aligned with approved drawings and models.
- Confirm that all manufactured parts, purchased components, hardware, spares, and required quantities are captured before release.
- Ensure part-number requests and supporting engineering information are submitted promptly and accurately.
- Coordinate with Engineering Services, Data Entry, Costing, Procurement, and plant teams to support timely BOM approval and ERP release.
- Ensure revisions to drawings, BOMs, and part numbers are properly controlled and synchronized.
- Support phased or preliminary releases where appropriate to protect procurement and manufacturing schedules without compromising technical control.
- Investigate BOM discrepancies and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence.

Cross-Functional and Customer Coordination

- Partner with Project Management to confirm project priorities, milestones, dependencies, and delivery commitments.
- Coordinate with Sales Engineering to ensure estimates, proposals, and customer scope are accurately transferred into execution.
- Work with Structural Engineering to obtain required calculations, connection reviews, and technical approvals.
- Engage Procurement early on long-lead, custom, or technically critical components.
- Partner with Manufacturing and plant-based DFM engineers to ensure designs are safe, practical, efficient, and ready for production.
- Participate in customer design-review meetings and provide clear technical updates, decisions, risks, and required actions.
- Manage technical escalations constructively and drive timely resolution across functional boundaries.

Continuous Improvement

- Track engineering performance, including schedule adherence, first-pass approval, drawing and BOM accuracy, rework, engineering changes, and resource utilization.
- Identify recurring design or process failures and lead root-cause and corrective-action activities.
- Improve engineering workflows, design tools, templates, automation, and documentation standards.
- Capture lessons learned and ensure they are incorporated into future projects and standard designs.
- Support the Director of Design Engineering in capacity planning, resource forecasting, and execution of the department's strategic priorities.

Key Performance Indicators

Performance will be measured against outcomes including:

- On-time completion of engineering milestones
- Scheduled versus actual engineering release dates
- Drawing and model accuracy
- Engineering BOM completeness and accuracy
- First-pass customer and internal approval rates
- Volume and impact of engineering-related rework
- Timeliness of issue identification and escalation
- Engineering change frequency after production release
- Team capacity, productivity, and workload balance
- Development and performance of direct reports
- Manufacturing and project stakeholder satisfaction

Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Structural Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Typically 7-10 years of progressive engineering experience in a manufacturing, fabricated-products, construction-products, or engineered-to-order environment.
- Minimum of 3 years of engineering leadership or people-management experience.
- Demonstrated experience managing multiple complex engineering projects simultaneously.
- Strong understanding of design release, configuration control, engineering BOMs, manufacturing drawings, and change-management processes.
- Experience working with manufacturing, procurement, project management, and customer-facing teams.
- Proficiency with 3D CAD and engineering-document-management systems; experience with Autodesk Inventor, Vault, Revit, AutoCAD, or similar platforms is preferred.
- Experience with ERP/MRP systems and part-number or BOM-release processes is preferred.
- Experience in data-center infrastructure, modular construction, sheet-metal fabrication, structural systems, containment, or mechanical systems is advantageous.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

- Strong technical judgment with the ability to challenge designs constructively.
- Proven ability to lead teams in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
- Excellent planning, prioritization, and workload-management skills.
- High attention to detail and commitment to design and BOM accuracy.
- Ability to distinguish between issues requiring immediate escalation and those the team should resolve independently.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to communicate effectively with customers, senior leaders, engineers, manufacturing personnel, and other stakeholders.
- Decisive and accountable leadership style with a strong sense of urgency.
- Practical understanding of design for manufacturing and assembly.
- Ability to improve processes while maintaining project delivery.

Leadership Scope

The Engineering Manager owns the daily performance and delivery of the assigned design engineering team. The Director of Design Engineering retains overall accountability for the design engineering function, organizational strategy, department-wide capacity, technical governance, leadership structure, and performance across the complete project portfolio.

The Engineering Manager is expected to resolve routine delivery and personnel matters independently, escalating significant technical risk, resource constraints, customer-impacting delays, or cross-functional conflicts to the Director with a clear assessment and recommended course of action.