Engineering Manager

Power Engineering And Mfg•Waterloo, IA

About The Position

Power Engineering & Manufacturing, Ltd. (PEM), a custom industrial gearbox manufacturer, is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the Engineering Department and develop business through customer relationships and engineered solutions. The role centers on identifying customer problems that PEM’s engineering and manufacturing capabilities can address, engaging customers directly, understanding their equipment and business needs, and coordinating technical resources to develop and present solutions. The Engineering Manager leads the department’s people, workload, priorities, and performance. Working with Sales, Operations, Quality, Purchasing, and executive leadership, the position balances proactive customer development with support for quotations, current orders, manufacturing, and technical issues. It is primarily a leadership and customer-development role. The Principal Engineer provides specialized technical leadership, including design approval, verification and validation, engineering standards, and technical development of new-business quotations. The Engineering Manager ensures those activities are appropriately resourced and effective, and remains accountable for the department’s overall results. Direct design work may be required when workload, capability, and project commitments warrant it. The position also owns engineering workload planning and execution, employee development, cross-functional coordination, department objectives, and continuous improvement. The Engineering Manager is expected to maintain engineering rigor and documentation, ensure compliance with PEM’s Quality Management System, and keep the President & CEO informed of department performance, customer-development progress, capacity, technical risks, staffing needs, and employee development.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a closely related technical field, supported by a mechanical engineering background.
Practical experience with mechanical design and manufacturing.
Demonstrated experience leading, managing, and developing technical teams.
Demonstrated ability to identify customer opportunities, communicate the value of engineered solutions, and follow through to win new business.
Interpersonal confidence and initiative to start customer conversations, request meetings, develop relationships, and ask for additional opportunities.
Sound business judgment and ability to connect technical solutions with customer value and PEM’s business objectives.
Proven ability to prioritize, delegate, organize work, follow up, and hold others accountable.
Strong communication, decision-making, and problem-solving skills, including ability to explain technical matters to technical and nontechnical audiences.
Independent and accountable working style, with ability to identify next steps and move work forward without continual direction.
Comfort managing competing demands and making thoughtful tradeoffs in a dynamic manufacturing environment.
Ability to work in both office and manufacturing environments.
Ability to wear required personal protective equipment, including safety glasses and appropriate footwear.
Ability to travel occasionally to customer locations.

Nice To Haves

Experience working across Engineering, Sales, Operations, and Quality.
Experience in applications engineering, technical sales, or customer-facing engineering involving the development of engineered solutions.

Responsibilities

Lead engineered-solution business development for priority accounts by initiating customer contact, building relationships, and pursuing profitable, repeatable business.
Understand customers’ equipment, operating challenges, business objectives, and decision-makers; engage early to shape requirements and solutions before formal requests for quotation.
Research and test ideas about customer needs and possible solutions, distinguish assumptions from validated problems, and focus engineering effort on opportunities with customer value and a strong fit for PEM.
Direct applications engineering and other technical resources to develop solutions; work with Sales and the Principal Engineer to communicate value, develop quotations, and advance opportunities through customer decisions and, where applicable, prototype evaluation and production.
Apply PEM’s Account Focus Initiative and maintain current account and opportunity information in shared systems, including Salesforce, with supporting evidence, decisions, next actions, owners, and due dates.
Protect time for proactive customer development, make competing demands and resource tradeoffs explicit, and escalate conflicts requiring leadership decisions.
Lead, coach, and hold engineering employees accountable for responsibilities, professional conduct, commitments, and results.
Conduct performance reviews, provide timely feedback, address performance concerns, and develop onboarding, training, mentoring, and succession plans.
Coordinate technical instruction through the Principal Engineer and other qualified team members and follow up on employee development.
Participate in interviewing, hiring, onboarding, disciplinary action, and termination decisions as required.
Build a respectful environment that encourages questions, ideas, constructive technical discussion, independent problem-solving, and learning while maintaining ownership and accountability.
Own engineering workload planning, scheduling, assignments, and capacity management across customer development, pre-quotation work, order-related design, and operational support.
Establish realistic priorities and due dates, monitor progress, address obstacles, and balance strategic account development with support for existing customers, manufacturing, and quality needs.
Use PEM’s planning and workflow systems to maintain visibility of assignments, capacity, deadlines, and handoffs; resolve resource conflicts within departmental authority and escalate broader business decisions.
Ensure the Principal Engineer and Design Engineers have clear responsibilities, appropriate resources, and effective review and escalation practices.
Oversee the Principal Engineer’s execution of design approval, verification and validation, engineering standards, and technical quotation development.
Maintain engineering rigor and documentation discipline as work moves from customer requirements and proposed solutions into detailed design and manufacturing.
Establish and track department objectives aligned with PEM’s business goals; keep the President & CEO informed of engineering performance, customer-development progress, capacity constraints, technical risks, staffing needs, and employee development.
Take ownership of engineering outcomes, address problems directly, and follow issues through resolution.
Coordinate with Sales, Operations, Quality, Purchasing, and executive leadership to align customer needs, engineering priorities, manufacturing requirements, and delivery commitments.
Provide timely, proactive engineering support and communicate scope, progress, risks, and constraints clearly; participate in leadership meetings, planning discussions, customer meetings, and execution reviews as needed.
Ensure customer commitments and internal handoffs reflect a shared understanding of requirements, responsibilities, and next steps.
Improve engineering practices related to design integrity, scheduling, execution, and documentation; identify recurring bottlenecks, use evidence to guide decisions, and standardize work where it improves consistency and throughput.
Ensure engineering activities comply with PEM’s Quality Management System.
Perform direct design work when workload, capability, and project commitments warrant it.