Engineering Manager

Carolina Foods Inc.•Pineville, NC

10d•$100,000 - $100,000•Onsite

About The Position

Carolina Foods LLC is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the plant’s forward-looking improvement agenda and develop its capital project pipeline. This is a hands-on engineering role: the manager personally develops specifications, FMEAs, business cases, and commissioning plans, and owns the technical integrity of projects through startup and verified results. The role focuses on making existing production lines better and building the plant’s future capabilities. It does not own day-to-day reactive maintenance or the plant-wide legacy preventive maintenance program, which remain with the Maintenance Lead and future engineering leadership, respectively. The manager identifies and prioritizes opportunities involving OEE, yield, changeover time, production rate, and labor productivity; uses flow and constraint analysis to identify system-level bottlenecks; and leads structured improvement events with cross-functional teams. The role scopes and justifies capital projects, works with Finance, Operations, Quality, the COO, and plant leadership, and personally leads vendor selection, design review, installation oversight, and commissioning. For projects and assets within the role’s scope, the manager validates performance against design intent, completes FMEAs, derives PM procedures and frequencies, defines spare-parts strategies, and validates operating parameters against flow data. The manager also supports root-cause analysis, hands off equipment to the Maintenance Lead with training and documentation, and tracks realized results against the original business case for at least two full quarters after startup. The position is onsite at a high-volume industrial bakery in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, combining plant-floor leadership with office work for planning, analysis, and project coordination.

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, ideally in food or CPG manufacturing.
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.
Strong financial acumen, including the ability to build and defend ROI/payback cases to Finance and executive leadership.
Ability to develop technical specifications, analyses, FMEAs, and validated operating parameters while retaining ownership of the technical substance.
Ability to lead across functions without direct supervisory authority, communicate technical tradeoffs, and report setbacks honestly.
Ability to use reliable operating data, challenge assumptions, distinguish projected benefits from verified results, and apply systems thinking to plant performance.
Ability to follow required personal protective equipment, hygiene practices, and safe-work procedures.
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.

Responsibilities

Own the loss and opportunity Pareto for existing lines, including OEE, yield, changeover time, rate, and labor productivity, and convert it into a prioritized improvement pipeline.
Apply 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 monitor completed improvements.
Scope and specify capital projects, build ROI/payback business 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 for the role’s 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 related to the role’s projects or the plant’s highest-impact assets, in partnership with the Maintenance Lead.
Formally hand off new or modified equipment to the Maintenance Lead, including training, documentation, and a defined transition point.
Track realized project results against the original business case for at least two full quarters after startup and report gaps openly.
Manage project scope, schedule, resources, cost forecasts, vendor commitments, and risk controls to deliver approved projects.
Document decisions, train operating owners, and follow projects through commissioning, handoff, and sustained operation.