VP, Engineering

Wabash•Lafayette, IN

6h•Onsite

About The Position

The Vice President of Engineering is the enterprise leader for product development, innovation, and engineering execution at Wabash. This role owns the end-to-end product lifecycle—from concept and development through launch, sustainment, and end-of-life—ensuring that products are safe, compliant, manufacturable, cost-competitive and aligned with market needs. The Vice President of Engineering also serves as the architect and owner of the enterprise engineering system, ensuring that digital, physical and operational engineering capabilities function as an integrated, closed-loop system that drives innovation, safety, execution excellence and enterprise value. This role contributes directly to enterprise value creation by enabling growth, improving product performance and reliability and reducing total lifecycle cost.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering required; Master’s degree or MBA preferred.
15+ years of progressive engineering leadership experience in a manufacturing environment.
Strong background in product development, manufacturing engineering and lifecycle management.
Demonstrated ability to balance engineering discipline with speed and innovation.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end new product development (NPD) from concept through launch, sustainment and end-of-life.
Define, implement and enforce a disciplined stage-gate product development process.
Ensure new products are delivered on-time, on-cost and on-spec, with strong launch readiness and transition to manufacturing.
Define and lead the enterprise R&D and innovation strategy aligned with business growth objectives.
Build and manage a pipeline of next-generation products, platforms and enabling technologies.
Evaluate and integrate advanced materials, automation and digital design innovations.
Own the enterprise engineering digital architecture and digital thread, enabling closed-loop visibility across design, manufacturing, field performance, safety outcomes and customer value.
Lead adoption of digital engineering tools and data-driven design practices and enable data-based decision-making across engineering and manufacturing.
Serve as the final accountable executive for enterprise product safety, regulatory compliance and technical risk management across all product platforms.
Ensure adherence to DOT, NHTSA and other applicable regulatory standards, embedding safety and reliability into product design across the full lifecycle.
Partner with Commercial to integrate voice of customer (VOC) and market insights into product design, ensuring engineering execution supports commercially successful products.
Engage with customers as needed to validate requirements and resolve complex technical issues.
Drive design-to-cost, value engineering, and material optimization initiatives.
Own engineering-driven contributions to gross margin expansion, cost competitiveness and warranty reduction through disciplined design-for-manufacturing and lifecycle improvements.
Align engineering priorities with SIOP, demand planning and capacity strategies.
Balance platform standardization with customization needs to support scalability and responsiveness.
Build, develop, and retain high-performing engineering leaders and technical talent.
Establish succession plans and career pathways for critical engineering roles.