Mechanical Engineering Manager - IE&A

ITW • Appleton, WI

12d • Onsite

About The Position

Reporting to the Director of Engineering, the Mechanical Engineering Manager leads a high-performing functional engineering team and is responsible for delivering innovative, customer-focused solutions throughout the product lifecycle. This role balances technical execution with strategic talent development, ensuring the right capabilities, processes, and organizational structure are in place to support divisional growth, product innovation, and product sustainability. A successful leader demonstrates strong cross-functional collaboration, a deep understanding of engineering practices, and a commitment to developing both people and organizational capability while enabling effective execution of new product development and sustainment initiatives.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering is required.
• Minimum of 7 years of engineering experience with demonstrated team leadership.
• Strong leadership and organizational skills with the ability to establish priorities and drive execution across multiple initiatives.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous situations, making informed decisions with incomplete information, and leading teams through change and uncertainty.
• Strong customer focus with the ability to translate pain points and industry trends into high-impact solutions.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in engineering management, including direct people leadership, talent development, resource alignment and workload planning is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a high-performing functional engineering team that supports current priorities and long-term divisional growth initiatives.
• Develop and sustain talent pipelines with a focus on succession planning and future capability needs.
• Promote a culture of growth by learning, engagement, creativity and foster inclusive and collaborative team environments.
• Role-model ITW’s core values — Trust, Respect, Integrity, Shared Risk, and Simplicity — in decision-making and leadership practices.
• Align engineering resources with Customer Back Innovation (CBI) priorities and product sustainability objectives.
• Collaborate with divisional leadership to align engineering strategies with business goals, long-range plans, and product lifecycle support needs.
• Ensure consistent application of CBI best practices, driving disciplined, high-quality execution.
• Provide early-stage project input, including risk assessments, technical feasibility, and effort estimation.
• Apply lessons learned from product development, production and field performance to continuously improve development speed, efficiency, product quality and customer experience.
• Partner with Operations, Quality, Service and Product Management to ensure effective prioritization and execution of product sustainment efforts, including field issue resolution, engineering change management, component obsolescence mitigation, and manufacturing support.
• Develop organizational capability to support both new product development and product sustainment responsibilities across the engineering team.
• Anticipate and plan for emerging technical needs to support future growth and innovation.
• Leverage internal and external resources to ensure adequate design capacity and capability.
• Champion innovation and support the development and protection of intellectual property.
• Collaborate with cross-functional managers and senior technical leaders to align project priorities, facilitate cross-functional problem solving, and maintain a systems-level approach to product development, sustainment, and technology exploration.
• Develop and manage departmental budgets and capex expenditures in support of team development and continuous improvement initiatives.

Benefits

• 401(k) match PLUS an additional retirement contribution
• 11 paid holidays
• 5 sick days
• Vacation time
• Company-Paid Insurance – Life, AD&D, Short-Term & Long-Term Disability insurance
• 4 weeks of paid parental leave
• Adoption reimbursement
• Tuition reimbursement

What This Job Offers

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