Engineering Manager

Carolina Foods•Pineville, NC

4d•Onsite

About The Position

Carolina Foods LLC is seeking a hands-on engineering leader for its high-volume industrial bakery in Pineville, North Carolina. The role owns the plant’s forward-looking improvement agenda: improving existing lines and developing and delivering capital projects. The Engineering Manager personally performs the technical work—including specifications, FMEAs, business cases, and startup—and serves as the technical authority for projects they lead. Success means maintaining a credible pipeline of improvement and capital projects, delivering them on time and on budget, commissioning them to a sound technical standard, and tracking realized results against commitments. This role is not responsible for day-to-day reactive maintenance, floor-level preventive-maintenance execution, or a comprehensive rebuild of the plant’s legacy PM program. Those responsibilities remain with the Maintenance Lead or are described as a future Engineering Lead mandate. The Engineering Manager applies reliability and FMEA discipline to their own projects and assets they are asked to investigate. The position is onsite in a high-volume industrial bakery, combining plant-floor leadership with office work for planning, analysis, and project coordination. It involves walking and standing in production areas and accessing equipment areas for inspection and startup support. Conditions may include heat, noise, moving equipment, and material-handling traffic. Required PPE, hygiene practices, and safe-work procedures must be followed. Flexibility is needed for off-shift work, weekends, shutdowns, emergencies, and project-related travel. Essential functions may be performed with reasonable accommodation.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Industrial, Process, or Manufacturing Engineering, or equivalent hands-on experience in a highly automated manufacturing environment.
Track record of personally leading capital projects from specification through startup, rather than only coordinating others’ engineering; food or CPG manufacturing experience is ideal.
Demonstrated continuous-improvement leadership using Lean, Six Sigma, or an equivalent approach, with results tied to OEE, yield, or throughput gains.
Hands-on working knowledge of FMEA, root-cause analysis methodology, and preventive-maintenance strategy development as engineering disciplines.
Strong financial acumen, including ability to build and defend ROI and payback cases to Finance and executive leadership.
Ability to personally develop technical specifications, analyses, FMEAs, and validated operating parameters.
Ability to manage project scope, schedule, resources, cost forecasts, vendor commitments, and risk controls.
Ability to use flow, constraint, and structured root-cause analysis to address causes and improve plant-wide performance.
Ability to lead across functions without direct supervisory authority, communicate technical tradeoffs clearly, and report setbacks honestly.
Ability to work onsite in a high-volume industrial bakery and follow required PPE, hygiene practices, and safe-work procedures.
Ability to walk and stand in production areas and access equipment areas for inspection and startup support; essential functions may be performed with reasonable accommodation.
Flexibility for off-shift work, weekends, shutdowns, emergencies, and project-related travel.

Nice To Haves

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
Experience with automated packaging or wrapping equipment and high-speed bakery or food production lines.
Familiarity with capital appropriation (AFE) processes in a PE-backed or multi-site manufacturing environment.
Familiarity with CMMS/EAM platforms such as RedZone.
Experience in food or CPG manufacturing is described as ideal.

Responsibilities

Own the loss and opportunity Pareto for existing lines—including OEE, yield, changeover time, rate, and labor productivity—and turn it into a prioritized improvement pipeline.
Use flow and constraint analysis, including Theory of Constraints, to identify the plant’s true system constraint before proposing improvements.
Lead structured improvement events such as Kaizen or DMAIC with cross-functional teams, and establish control plans to sustain and measure improvements.
Scope and specify capital projects; build ROI and payback cases, align with Finance, Operations, and Quality, and prepare formal AFE approval packages.
Build and prioritize the capital project pipeline against plant strategic priorities in partnership with the COO and plant leadership.
Personally lead vendor and OEM selection, design reviews, and installation oversight as the technical authority for assigned projects.
Deliver commissioning packages that validate performance against design intent, complete FMEAs, derive PM procedures and frequencies, define spare-parts strategies, and validate operating parameters against real flow data.
Lead or directly support root-cause analysis for failures involving the role’s projects or the plant’s highest-impact assets, partnering with the Maintenance Lead and identifying underlying causes rather than merely replacing parts.
Formally hand off new or modified equipment to the Maintenance Lead, including training, documentation, and a defined transition point.
Track realized results against the original business case for at least two full quarters after startup and report gaps openly.
Personally develop specifications, technical analyses, FMEAs, and validated operating parameters while retaining ownership of the technical substance.
Integrate project scope, schedules, resources, cost forecasts, vendor commitments, and risk controls to deliver approved projects.
Protect agreed project priorities, document decisions, train operating owners, and follow projects through commissioning, handoff, and sustained operation.
Report project results, setbacks, and technical limitations honestly, using reliable operating data and conservative assumptions.
Work flexibly when needed for off-shift activities, weekends, shutdowns, emergencies, and project-related travel.