Vice President Engineering Operational Excellence

Acuity Inc • Atlanta, GA

5d

About The Position

The VP, Engineering Operational Excellence leads the operating model that enables the engineering organization to execute efficiently, predictably, and at scale. The role owns engineering resource and capacity planning, operational performance reporting, process excellence, and technology enablement across engineering. It serves as a cross-functional integrator across Engineering, Product Management, Sourcing, Pre/Post Sales, Manufacturing, Finance, Electronics, and Technology to improve product vitality, velocity, product data quality, digital transformation, and organizational effectiveness. The position provides the VP of Engineering with fact-based visibility, decision support, and disciplined follow-through on strategic initiatives.

The role is based within Acuity Inc., a market-leading industrial technology company with businesses in lighting and intelligent spaces. Acuity designs, manufactures, and markets products and services including lighting, lighting controls, building management solutions, and audio, video, and control platforms. The company is based in Atlanta, Georgia, operates across North America, Europe, and Asia, and has approximately 13,000 associates.

The position may involve collaboration across engineering, manufacturing, and business locations; executive reviews; and support for change-management activities related to engineering systems, processes, and initiatives. Domestic and/or international travel may be required.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent.
• At least 12 years of experience.
• Strategic operations leadership, translating engineering priorities into executable roadmaps, governance routines, metrics, and cross-functional action plans.
• Strong communication skills, including communicating complex engineering, operational, and process-change topics to senior leaders and cross-functional stakeholders using concise, data-supported messaging.
• Demonstrated ability to build executive dashboards, define KPIs, interpret operational performance trends, and distinguish status reporting from execution reality.
• Experience leading process improvement, standard work, stage-gate governance, ECO or product development process optimization, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Working knowledge of engineering business systems and digital process practices, including PLM, product data governance, BOM/configuration management, requirements management, workflow automation, and AI-enabled productivity tools.
• Strong cross-functional leadership, influence, and change-management skills, including the ability to align Engineering, Product Management, Quality, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Finance, HR, and IT.
• Financial and business acumen sufficient to support engineering budgets, capital planning, investment prioritization, cost-out tracking, and benefits realization for strategic initiatives.
• Ability to perform sedentary work, exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally and negligible force frequently or constantly; role involves mostly sitting with occasional walking and standing.
• May need to collaborate across multiple engineering, manufacturing, and business locations, participate in executive reviews, and support change-management activities.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Operations, Business, or a related technical field.
• Master's degree or MBA.
• Experience in engineering operations, PMO/portfolio governance, product development execution, PLM/digital process, process improvement, and cross-functional leadership in a manufacturing or technology-driven environment.
• Lighting, controls, electrical products, building technology, or related industry experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering portfolio governance and operating cadence, including project health reviews, milestone tracking, resource-risk escalation, executive scorecards, and decision support for the VP of Engineering.
• Own engineering resource, capacity, and organizational planning, including demand-versus-capacity analysis, headcount planning support, contractor oversight, skills-gap visibility, and prioritization tradeoff analysis.
• Drive engineering process excellence and continuous improvement by standardizing product development, ECO, launch readiness, and cross-functional execution processes; identify bottlenecks and implement measurable improvements.
• Lead engineering digital process improvement, including PLM/digital-thread adoption, product data governance, AI and automation opportunities, requirements traceability, and engineering knowledge-management workflows.
• Establish and maintain engineering operational metrics and dashboards for quality, delivery, cost, innovation, productivity, resource utilization, and portfolio throughput.
• Coordinate cross-functional execution across Engineering, Product Management, Quality, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Finance, HR, Electronics, and IT to resolve dependencies, improve launch readiness, and ensure strategic initiative alignment.
• Support engineering financial and business management, including budget tracking, capital planning inputs, lab/equipment investment visibility, cost-reduction reporting, and benefits-realization tracking for initiatives.

What This Job Offers

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