Chief Engineering R&D Officer

Location: Racine, WI

Security Clearance: N/A

We are working on a search for a large outdoor products company.

Engineering and Research & Development functions.

Innovation (Front-End Integration):

•Working with the cross functional innovation team oversees the end-to-end product development
process, from Gate 1 approval to commercialization, ensuring products meet market demands and
regulatory requirements.
•Develops and supports the use of prototypes for enhancing market research with user feedback of
potential products.
•Active voice in innovation process, assessing technical merit of new ideas prior at early stages prior
to commitment of enterprise resources.
•Collaborates closely with the Marketing Lead of the innovation team to ensure alignment and
collaborate on the development of the enterprise innovation process.
•Ensures Engineering Department adheres to enterprise innovation process.
•Ensures product delivers product experience that mirrors the conceptual intent: product/concept
fit.
•Works with the marketing/product strategy and sales teams to successfully bring new products to
market and maximize their commercial success. Identifies / develops / delivers technical details /
information that supports marketing messaging within the aligned timeline.

Execution [Core Engineering Activities]:

•Oversees the ideation, conceptualization, and development of new consumer goods products (how
the product will deliver the concept), ensuring a maintaining a robust innovation pipeline by
meeting strategic objectives on time and within budget.
•Oversees the design, development, and testing of prototypes that conform to product concepts and
performance requirements provided by Brand/Marketing.
•Leads the definition and articulation of engineering specifications based on anticipated and
unanticipated usage. Performs risk analyses, including FMEA, to identify necessary improvements.
•Ensures appropriate technical analysis is performed to ensure design robustness in functionality and
durability. Comfortable with performing and assessing analytical, computational, and experimental
analyses within discipline and leveraging appropriate resources to assess analyses outside discipline.
•Develops a culture of excellence for the engineering function, this includes defining and tracking key
performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the team and individuals.
•Implements and oversees effective methodologies to ensure timely and cost- effective development
of consumer goods.

Execution [Core R&D Activities]:

•Supports development of technologies new to the product space and revolutionary applications of
existing technologies to create new product categories that are aligned with broad brand strategies.
•Continuously assesses broad consumer goods technology space in other industries to identify
potential game-changing technology applications. Brings blue-sky new ideas to Marketing team for
assessment of potential fit within brand innovation strategy.
Ops [Back-End Integration]:
•Collaborates with Operations to ensure product quality, safety, and compliance with relevant
regulations and standards. Identifies appropriate regulations and standards for new product
categories.
•Collaborates with Operations to ensure manufactured product meets defined product technical
specifications by developing and tracking appropriate test methods.
•Effectively integrates with operations to ensure work product design is aligned with what operations
can reliably produce using modern Design for Manufacturability principles.
•Collaborates with Operations to track warranty claims, identify potential issues related to design,
and implement product improvements to alleviate issues.
•Oversees in-house Failure Analysis function to troubleshoot product performance issues, identify
broadly applicable engineering lessons, and integrate lessons into future product development.
•Perform due diligence and quality oversight on engineering work performed by third-party
suppliers/vendors.

Strategic Planning (Product) / Executive Leadership:

•Represents The Company in a variety of industry, institutional, and/or professional forums with
investors, clients, the public, and others to promote the company.
•Collaborates closely with GVP, brand management, and operations to align engineering efforts with
product strategy, business objectives and ensure product success in the market.
•Assists in designing, developing, and delivering the strategic plan for each area of the business,
providing the specific viewpoint of engineering, applying functional expertise to test the viability of
the business strategy, and contributing creative ideas and insights to support the strategy formation
process
•Provides regular reports on engineering progress, product development milestones, and key
performance indicators to senior leadership.
•Manages the intellectual property portfolio, patent strategy, and protect valuable innovations.

Strategic Planning (Capabilities, Resources):

•Stays at the forefront of industry trends, engineering best practices, and emerging technologies,
leveraging insights for innovative and creative product design and development.
•Identifies and develops appropriate engineering technical capabilities, including the use of
appropriate computational, experimental, organizational tools. Responsibly allocates capital
expenditure / development budget.
•Develops resource sharing plan for engineering capabilities (equipment and expertise) across
business units.
•Identifies preferred external (3rd party) technology partners and how/when to best leverage.
•Integrates sustainability practices and environmental responsibility into product development
processes, considering eco-friendly materials and practices and ensuring compliance with applicable
regulations.
•Effectively leverages internal and external resources to ensure appropriate speed to market.
Balances the use of outside resources and hiring of critical talent as appropriate.

Team Building:

•Relates to individual capabilities and develops employees' technical skills as appropriate. Creates a
culture where each engineer works at the top of their skill- set and has life-long
learning opportunities.
•Creates cohesive engineering brand across business units.
•Identifies and elevates appropriate engineering talent into enterprise-wide roles serving multiple
business units.
•Performs other duties as assigned.

Supervisory/Management Responsibility:

•Performs human resources responsibilities for staff, which includes but is not limited to the
following: hiring and terminating employees, promotions/pay adjustments, staff development,
performance evaluations, resolution of employee concerns and disciplinary counseling.
•Oversees the development of budgets, and ensures budgets are managed within approved
guidelines.
•Oversees the development and approval departmental policies, procedures, and guidelines to meet
business needs.

Knowledge & Background Requirements:

•Typically requires a master's degree in electrical or mechanical engineering. PhD also preferred.

•Typically requires a minimum of 15 years of extensive experience in leadership roles, preferably in
engineering and research & development positions.

•Industry expertise: Strong knowledge of the industry in which the company operates.

•R&D experience: Track record of new product development.

•Project management: Strong project management skills, keeping teams on time and under budget.

•Commercialization: Experience commercializing at least one product in an organization that deal
with high volume commercial products.

•People Management: Experience overseeing a diverse team, ideally spread across multiple
locations, with the ability to lead employees in areas outside own expertise.

•Cultural Transformation: Ability to create and mature an engineering culture. This experience may
come from working in a start-up environment or from building a function in a larger organization.
Build strong engineering rigor and customer satisfaction.

•Key Competencies: cultivates innovation, strategic mindset, business insight, balances stakeholders,
manages complexity, collaborates, plans, and aligns, optimizes work processes, persuades,
situational adaptability.

•Personal Attributes: Tolerance of ambiguity, openness to differences, need for achievement, risktaking,
adaptability, influence, credibility, sociability.

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