Manager, Engineering

Columbus McKinnon•Menomonee Falls, WI

About The Position

The Engineering Manager leads the design function for Magnetek operations in Menomonee Falls, providing technical and people leadership for safe, accurate, and timely delivery of customer-specific engineered solutions from order handoff through production release and shipment support. The manager establishes priorities, balances engineering capacity, strengthens design and review processes, and develops technical capability to meet customer, quality, delivery, and cost objectives. The role partners with Operations, Project Management, Customer Service, Sales, Quality, Materials, Manufacturing Engineering, and Product Management to turn customer requirements into manufacturable designs. It is accountable for improving engineering lead time, on-time completion, first-pass quality, change control, and engineering-status visibility, while fostering ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement aligned with the Columbus McKinnon Business System (CMBS).

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a related technical field.
Seven or more years of progressive engineering experience.
At least three years of experience leading engineers or other technical professionals.
Experience with design controls, engineering changes, configuration management, and release of technical documentation.
Experience supporting manufactured industrial products in a customer-configured or engineer-to-order environment.
Demonstrated ability to lead and develop technical teams in a high-mix, customer-configured, or engineer-to-order environment.
Strong engineering judgment, including the ability to guide complex design decisions, manage technical risk, and recognize when deeper subject-matter expertise is needed.
Working knowledge of relevant electrical, controls, mechanical, embedded/software, or related engineering disciplines for industrial products and systems.
Strong understanding of design controls, configuration management, engineering change processes, bills of material, drawings, specifications, and product documentation.
Working knowledge of applicable electrical, machinery, functional safety, product safety, and material-handling codes and standards, and judgment to identify when specialist review, testing, or certification is required.
Ability to convert demand and project data into practical workload priorities, capacity plans, commitments, and recovery actions.
Experience applying Lean, Kaizen, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and standard work to engineering or transactional processes.
Excellent cross-functional communication and influence skills with engineers, shop-floor teams, customers, business leaders, and senior leadership.
Ability to manage competing priorities with urgency while maintaining technical quality, process discipline, and customer focus.
Strong organizational, project-management, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office and familiarity with ERP, CAD, PLM/PDM, workflow, and project or capacity-management systems.
Maintains current knowledge of relevant technologies, engineering methods, product applications, codes, standards, and industry developments.

Nice To Haves

Experience with industrial controls, variable-frequency drives, radio controls, crane or material-handling applications, or custom electrical systems.
Experience with design verification, functional safety, regulatory compliance, or applicable industrial product standards.
Experience with ERP and CAD/PLM/PDM systems.
Lean, Kaizen, Six Sigma, or structured problem-solving experience.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop a multidisciplinary engineering organization, including setting expectations and establishing standard work, training, cross-training, accountability, and succession plans.
Prioritize, schedule, and assign engineering work according to customer commitments, project complexity, capacity, technical risk, and production needs.
Own design execution from order handoff and requirements clarification through design, review, approval, release, and production support.
Establish capacity planning and visual management practices to identify workload constraints, competing priorities, schedule risks, and recovery actions.
Improve engineering lead time, on-time completion, first-pass quality, rework, engineering changes, and customer response time.
Drive value engineering and design-to-cost activities while maintaining safety, quality, performance, and customer requirements.
Ensure requirements are translated into complete, accurate, safe, and manufacturable drawings, bills of material, specifications, calculations, and technical documentation.
Maintain technical review and design verification practices suited to project complexity and risk, and incorporate issues and lessons learned into standards and future designs.
Provide technical direction and escalation support for complex applications, design questions, production issues, field concerns, and customer-specific requirements.
Manage engineering change and release discipline, including configuration, revision control, documentation, approvals, and timely communication to affected functions.
Partner with Operations and Manufacturing Engineering to improve design for manufacturability, assembly, test, service, and cost, while reducing downstream disruption and non-value-added work.
Partner with Project Management, Customer Service, and Sales to clarify order and change scope, assumptions, deliverables, technical risks, and timing.
Support root-cause analysis and corrective action for design-related quality issues, production failures, warranty concerns, and late deliveries; verify corrective actions are effective and sustained.
Develop and maintain engineering standards, templates, tools, workflows, and knowledge-management practices that improve consistency, speed, and traceability.
Use data and structured problem solving to identify trends, prioritize improvements, and communicate performance, constraints, and countermeasures to site and business leadership.
Prepare and manage departmental objectives, staffing plans, training plans, and budget inputs, and make effective use of internal and external engineering resources.
Perform supervisory responsibilities in accordance with company policies and applicable laws, including hiring, onboarding, goal setting, performance management, recognition, and issue resolution.
Perform other duties and lead special projects as assigned.