Senior Applications Engineer

Detroit Manufacturing Systems • Wixom, MI

19h

About The Position

Kinetyc sits at the intersection of advanced manufacturing and deep product engineering — and our customers are building some of the most technically complex end products in their respective markets. This role exists because our customers need more than a contract manufacturer. They need a technical partner who understands their product, anticipates their engineering challenges, and can translate between their design intent and our manufacturing reality — fluently, confidently, and quickly.

Requirements

• 8–15 years of engineering experience with meaningful time on the product/customer side — you’ve been the person the customer calls, not just the person who builds
• Background in mechanical, electrical, or systems engineering; experience with electromechanical or complex assembled products strongly preferred
• Comfortable in DFM conversations — you can tell a customer what’s not manufacturable and why, and offer a better path forward without losing the relationship
• Experience reading and interpreting CAD, BOMs, and technical design packages
• Worked in or with contract manufacturers, Tier 1/2 suppliers, or product development environments
• Familiar with the pace and ambiguity of early-stage or scaling hardware companies — you don’t need a perfect spec to get started
• Strong communicator: equally effective in a technical design review and an executive business conversation

Nice To Haves

• You think in systems, not just parts — you understand how design decisions upstream affect manufacturability, cost, and schedule downstream
• You ask the uncomfortable question early instead of absorbing the problem late
• You treat customer relationships as long-term partnerships, not transactions
• You’re organized enough to manage multiple customers in parallel without dropping the ball
• You take pride in being the person who makes complex things happen smoothly

Responsibilities

• Primary technical relationship with new and existing customers from onboarding through production
• Lead customer engineering conversations — requirements gathering, DFM feedback, systems integration discussions, and technical risk identification
• Bridge between customer product design and Kinetyc manufacturing engineering — translating CAD, BOM, and design packages into executable manufacturing plans
• Support the 30-day new customer launch process as the technical lead
• Identify and communicate gaps between customer expectations and Kinetyc capabilities — early, clearly, and with proposed solutions
• Contribute to FLEXembly™ and innovation initiatives where customer insight drives product development opportunities
• Represent Kinetyc’s technical capability in customer-facing settings — presentations, site visits, design reviews

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed