The Manager, Sustaining Engineering leads the engineering team that maintains and improves ICON's field-deployed systems and manufacturing processes. You own the resolution of field issues, the work instructions that keep crews and manufacturing running, and the systems that track equipment performance. New product development stays with the design engineering teams; Sustaining owns everything after release.
You will work daily with program management, manufacturing, field operations, and design engineering, and you are accountable for your team's priorities, schedules, procedures, and budget execution. This role is based at ICON's Austin, TX office and reports to the VP of Product and Engineering.
Responsibilities
Team Leadership
- Manage a team of ~6 sustaining engineers, setting priorities, assigning work, and reviewing output against objectives set with the VP of Vulcan Engineering.
- Coach engineers through moderately complex field issues and provide technical direction on root cause analysis, corrective actions, and design changes.
- Plan headcount, hiring, and skill development for the team and determine the resources needed to meet schedules and goals.
Field Issue Resolution and Reliability
- Own the intake, triage, and closure of field issues on deployed systems, including escalation paths to design engineering when a change to the released product is required.
- Build and maintain the systems used to track and analyze field equipment performance, and use that data to prioritize reliability improvements.
- Lead test planning and validation for product enhancements and sustaining changes before release to the field and manufacturing.
Work Instructions and Process
- Partner with program management and manufacturing to create and revise work instructions for new and existing products, ensuring they are accurate, current, and usable by the people performing the work.
- Establish and document the procedures the Sustaining team follows for change control, issue tracking, and release of updates, and recommend changes to engineering policies where current practice falls short.
- Identify and implement automation opportunities in field and internal engineering workflows, from tooling and data capture to repetitive manual processes.
Planning and Budget
- Execute the Sustaining Engineering budget, tracking spend against plan and flagging variances to the VP.
- Contribute to Vulcan Engineering planning cycles with input on team capacity, reliability priorities, and resource needs.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 5+ years of engineering experience with hardware systems in production or field use, including prior supervisory or people management experience.
- Experience leading engineers through root cause analysis and corrective action on fielded or manufactured products.
- Demonstrated ability to define and run team procedures, work plans, and schedules within an established engineering organization.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.
- Clear verbal and written communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to operate in a fast-paced environment with evolving priorities.
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Experience with robotics, automation, or other complex electromechanical systems.
- Start-up or small-company experience where the process had to be built rather than inherited.
- Familiarity with Jira or similar issue-tracking tools and with administering cloud-based collaboration tools.
- Knowledge of basic networking principles.
