Director, Engineering Applications

American Battery Solutions • Lake Orion, MI

10h • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Engineering Applications will lead, coordinate, and oversee the execution of engineering application activities across product development, production launch, and post-launch support. This role works in conjunction with the Director, Engineering and key stakeholders to ensure engineering work is clearly planned, organized, tracked, and delivered through the Pack Lead Engineering function. The Director, Engineering Applications provides leadership to the Pack Leads, who in turn provide direction and coordination to engineering teams supporting assigned programs and products. This role is responsible for driving milestone clarity, execution discipline, cross-functional coordination, and timely escalation of engineering risks, issues, and deliverables.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or a related technical discipline required.
• Minimum of seven (7) years' experience in product engineering, battery systems, automotive, commercial vehicle, energy storage, electrification, or a related technical product development environment.
• Minimum of five (5) years' experience leading engineering teams, technical leads, project engineers, product leads, or cross-functional technical execution teams.
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate complex engineering work across product development, launch, production support, quality, manufacturing, and supply chain functions.
• Strong understanding of engineering development processes, milestone management, technical reviews, engineering releases, issue tracking, risk management, validation, and launch readiness.
• Strong communication, prioritization, escalation, and cross-functional leadership skills.
• Ability to influence teams and drive execution without direct ownership of all engineering resources.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree preferred.
• Experience coaching technical leaders or lead engineers preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Pack Lead Engineering function to ensure engineering execution is aligned with program objectives, customer requirements, product targets, and organizational priorities.
• Apply detailed knowledge of battery and battery systems design and manufacturing to support engineering execution.
• Provide direction, coaching, and performance management to Pack Leads to improve ownership, accountability, technical coordination, communication, and milestone delivery.
• Coordinate engineering application activities across assigned programs, including new product development, production launch, post-launch support, and product improvement initiatives.
• Drive milestone clarity and execution discipline by ensuring engineering deliverables, timing, owners, dependencies, risks, and open issues are clearly identified and actively managed.
• Support the technical review process by ensuring Pack Leads and engineering teams are prepared for reviews, required information is available, actions are documented, and follow-up items are tracked to closure.
• Reinforce the use of established engineering standards, tools, processes, and release practices.
• Support engineering release robustness by driving closure of program-level open issues, risks, technical actions, and deliverables required to support release readiness.
• Coordinate with cross-functional stakeholders to align engineering execution with business and launch needs.
• Ensure Pack Leads maintain clear visibility to program risks, technical issues, resource constraints, deliverable status, and escalation needs.
• Escalate barriers that may impact engineering milestone achievement, product readiness, launch timing, customer commitments, or production support.
• Monitor engineering execution performance across programs and identify recurring gaps in planning, communication, technical readiness, review preparation, issue closure, and cross-functional alignment.
• Support structured problem-solving activities for significant engineering application issues by coordinating action ownership, timing, status visibility, and closure discipline.
• Promote disciplined communication of engineering priorities, program status, technical risks, issue resolution progress, and milestone readiness across the organization.
• Ensure engineering commitments made during program reviews, technical reviews, customer reviews, and launch-readiness reviews are tracked and completed.
• Support continuous improvement of engineering execution practices, including Pack Lead standard work, milestone tracking, action management, escalation practices, and cross-functional communication.
• Maintain working knowledge of battery systems, product applications, engineering development processes, launch requirements, and technical risks relevant to the organization’s products and programs.
• Adhere to federal and state regulations.
• Adhere to all company policies, processes, and procedures.
• Performs other duties as requested, directed, or assigned.
• Predictable and reliable attendance.

Benefits

• Comprehensive 100% employer paid benefit plans to employees and their family
• Competitive salary
• Retirement program
• Paid time off includes 3 weeks vacation, up to 72 hours sick, 15 holidays, and parental leave.
• 100% company-paid medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance.
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and Health Savings Account (HSA) offerings.
• Company provided 401K savings plan with immediately vested matching contributions to help you save for retirement.
• Voluntary benefits offerings.
• Tuition assistance.
• Employee Referral Program.
• Employee development and career growth opportunities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director