Design Engineer Manager

Aalberts Integrated Piping Systems Americas•Charlotte, NC

5d•Onsite

About The Position

This is an excellent opportunity for a driven Design Engineering Manager to unlock your ambition and work the future at Aalberts. As the Design Engineering Manager, you will lead a team of engineers responsible for new product development, major product enhancements, and strategic engineering initiatives across multiple product lines. This is a working manager role that combines people leadership, project leadership, and technical oversight. You will provide technical direction throughout the product development lifecycle by guiding engineering decisions, facilitating design reviews, managing project execution, and supporting your team through each stage of development. While your primary responsibility is leading the Design Engineering team, you will remain actively engaged in projects, serve as a technical resource for complex engineering challenges, and help strengthen the processes, tools, and capabilities needed to accelerate new product development.

Requirements

Experience building team capability, improving engineering processes, and establishing clear priorities, routines, and accountability within a technical organization.
Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering (ABET-accredited preferred) or a related engineering discipline.
10+ years of engineering experience with demonstrated success developing mechanical products within a manufacturing environment.
Experience leading engineering projects, mentoring engineers, or supervising technical teams.
Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional engineering projects through structured development, validation, launch, and post-launch improvement.
Strong understanding of mechanical design principles, manufacturing processes, product validation, engineering risk management, and engineering best practices.
Experience with structured product development methodologies, DFMEA, DFM/DFA, and product lifecycle management.
Upper intermediate (B2) language level in English.
Ability to communicate effectively with employees, leaders, vendors, and visitors in office, production, and warehouse environments, including areas where background noise is present and hearing protection is required.
Must be able to receive and exchange information necessary to perform the essential functions of the role and follow safety protocols in an industrial setting, with or without reasonable accommodation.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing valves, flow control products, plumbing systems, pressure-containing products, pumps, HVAC equipment, or similar engineered mechanical products.
Experience working with castings, forgings, machined components, molded components, elastomers, or other engineered assemblies.
Familiarity with modern 3D CAD and PDM/PLM systems.
Experience with IoT, connected products, smart systems, or digital product development (e.g., sensors, embedded systems, controls, or data-driven applications).

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop a team of design engineers while fostering a collaborative, accountable, and solutions-oriented engineering culture.
Lead new product development and major enhancement projects from concept through commercialization, ensuring alignment with business objectives, customer needs, schedules, financial goals, and launch readiness.
Provide technical leadership through design reviews, engineering problem solving, product validation, risk assessment, and key design decisions throughout the product development lifecycle.
Lead engineering execution within the NPD stage-gate process, ensuring projects are properly scoped, designed, validated, industrialized, launched, and reviewed against business and customer objectives.
Partner with Product Management to translate product strategy, Voice of Customer insights, and market opportunities into practical engineering requirements and scalable product designs.
Work cross-functionally to ensure successful product launches, production readiness, and long-term product performance.
Champion engineering best practices including DFMEA, DFM/DFA, validation planning, design standardization, engineering risk management, and structured product development methodologies.
Improve speed, discipline, and accountability across the concept-to-launch process by establishing clear engineering priorities, project milestones, decision points, and execution routines.
Lead development of engineered mechanical products and assemblies using cast, forged, machined, molded, and fabricated components while balancing performance, manufacturability, reliability, and cost.
Support selected connected-product and emerging technology initiatives by helping integrate sensing, controls, connectivity, or digital requirements into mechanical product development where applicable.
Establish and track engineering project metrics, including project milestones, validation status, launch readiness, resource allocation, cost-out impact, and contribution to innovation objectives.
Complete additional duties as assigned by your manager.