Role Description:The Senior Engineering Manager is a hands-on technical leader responsible for elevating our injection molding capabilities and growing our engineering department. This role bridges the gap between floor operations and our customers. You will directly recruit and mentor a high-performing process team, serve as the primary technical point of contact for clients, and manage tool development with external mold shops. Your mission is to build robust, data-driven injection molding processes that optimize cycle times and drastically reduce scrap
Why This Role Matters:- Drives manufacturing excellence, scalability, and customer satisfaction
- Builds disciplined, data-driven processes across facilities
- Directly impacts quality, cost, and operational performance
What you'll do:- Lead, coach, and develop the process engineering team, including staffing planning, recruiting, interviewing, and hiring
- Establish training standards, competency expectations, and development plans based on scientific molding principles
- Partner with production leadership to build setup technician capability and ensure consistent process execution across plants
- Represent process engineering in customer technical discussions related to process development, mold performance, sampling, validation, troubleshooting, and production readiness
- Translate customer technical requirements into clear internal engineering actions
- Partner cross-functionally with Quality, Tooling, Operations, and Program Management to meet customer expectations
- Provide injection molding expertise for mold design reviews, tool modifications, sampling plans, and initial tool trials
- Partner with Tool Engineering and external tool shops to evaluate mold performance, process capability, and production readiness
- Define and develop procedures, documentation standards, and technical expectations for scientific molding and decoupled process development
- Ensure consistent application of standards to maintain capable and repeatable processes across production
- Own the injection molding process validation framework for new product introductions (NPI)
- Establish standards for sampling, process development, capability studies, documentation, and production readiness
- Partner cross-functionally to ensure validation activities are clearly defined, aligned, and consistently executed
- Lead and prioritize continuous improvement initiatives driven by process engineering data (scrap, yield, cycle time, downtime, and customer feedback)
- Hold the process engineering team accountable for implementing sustainable improvements and maintaining process discipline
- sustainable improvements while partnering with production, quality, tooling, maintenance, and operations to ensure changes are effective, documented, and maintained.
What we're looking for:- 7-10 years of progressive injection molding engineering experience, with 3+ years in a supervisory or leadership role leading process engineers or technical teams.
- Strong mastery of Scientific Molding principles (RJG Master Molder or AIM Molding 2/3 certification is highly preferred).
- Solid understanding of mold design concepts and best practices, hot runner systems, gate design, and the ability to interpret 3D CAD/GD&T files.
- Hands-on technical leader who is visible on the production floor, builds trust with engineering and operations teams, and develops others through coaching, structured troubleshooting, and consistent process discipline.
- Bachelor's degree in Plastics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Polymer Engineering, or related technical field preferred; equivalent intensive hands-on injection molding experience will be considered.
This position will oversee Process Engineers at both of our molding facilities: Centennial, CO and El Paso, TX. At least 30% travel will be required.
