Mechanical Engineering Manager

Job Description

Job Description

About the Role

We are hiring a Mechanical Engineering Manager to lead a small, senior team of mechanical designers through concept, detailed design, build, and on-site commissioning. This is a player-coach role: you will spend roughly a quarter of your time in design tools and design reviews, and the rest developing engineers, protecting the schedule, and making calls that keep a machine buildable, serviceable, and on budget.

You will own the mechanical scope of multiple concurrent projects and partner daily with controls, electrical, and the shop floor. If you like seeing steel and servos move because of a decision you made three months earlier, this is that job.

What You'll Do

Lead and develop the team

•      Manage, mentor, and grow a team of 3–8 mechanical engineers and designers — hiring, onboarding,

goal setting, one-on-ones, and annual performance reviews.

•      Assign work across concurrent projects based on skill, development goals, and capacity; escalate

resourcing conflicts before they become schedule risk.

•      Build technical depth on the team through design review, coaching, and structured knowledge sharing

— not by taking the work back.

Own the mechanical engineering deliverable

•      Own mechanical scope, schedule, and budget for multiple concurrent automation projects from

proposal through customer sign-off.

•      Chair concept and detailed design reviews; hold the team to design-for-manufacture, design-for-

assembly, serviceability, and safety standards.

•      Approve major design decisions, engineering change orders, and release drawing packages before

they hit the shop or a supplier.

•      Drive root cause analysis and corrective action on mechanical issues found in build, debug, runoff, or

the field.

Partner across the business

•      Work with controls, electrical, and software engineering to resolve interface, packaging, and

sequencing issues early rather than at integration.

•      Support sales and applications with concept layouts, feasibility assessments, risk calls, and mechanical

cost and hour estimates during quoting.

•      Interface directly with customers at design reviews, factory acceptance testing, and on-site

commissioning — translating technical trade-offs into terms a plant manager can act on.

•      Coordinate with supply chain, machine shop, and assembly on lead times, make-versus-buy, tolerance

stack-ups and build issues.

Raise the engineering bar

•      Improve standards, design libraries, reusable modules, and CAD/PDM practices so the second

machine is faster than the first.

•      Ensure designs comply with applicable machine safety and industry standards (e.g., OSHA, ANSI/RIA

R15.06, ISO 10218, NFPA 79, CE where required).

•      Track and report on team metrics — on-time release, ECO volume, design-caused rework, estimate

accuracy — and act on what they show.

What You Bring

Required

•      Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related field.

•      7+ years of mechanical design experience in custom automation, machine building, capital

equipment, or systems integration.

•      2+ years leading engineers — as a manager, supervisor, or technical lead with formal responsibility for

others' work.

•      Demonstrated ownership of machine designs from concept through commissioning, including at least

one system you saw run in production.

•      Strong 3D CAD proficiency (SolidWorks, Inventor, Creo, or NX) and working knowledge of GD&T per

ASME Y14.5.

•      Practical command of the automation toolkit: servo and pneumatic motion, linear guides and

actuators, robotic end-of-arm tooling, precision fixturing, framing, guarding, and conveyance.

•      Working understanding machine safety standards and risk assessment methodology.

•      Willingness to travel up to 20% domestically and to be on-site when a machine needs you there.

Preferred

•      Experience with industrial robots (FANUC, ABB, KUKA, Yaskawa, or Universal Robots) and their

integration constraints.

•      PDM/PLM administration experience and a track record of standardizing a design library.

•      Familiarity with FEA, tolerance stack-up analysis, and cycle-time modeling.

•      Experience quoting custom automation and defending estimates against actuals.

•      Exposure to a regulated or high-mix production environment (automotive, medical device, food and

beverage, aerospace, or semiconductor).

•      Professional Engineer (PE) license or an advanced degree in engineering or management.

How You Work

•      Decisive under incomplete information. Custom automation never has all the data; you make the

call, document the assumption, and revisit it.

•      Coach first. You would rather spend two hours teaching an engineer to catch the problem than

twenty minutes fixing it yourself.

•      Fluent across disciplines. You can hold a real conversation with a controls engineer, a machinist, and

a customer's operations lead in the same afternoon.

•      Candid about risk. You surface schedule and technical risk early, in writing, with an option attached.

•      Grounded in the build. You spend time on the floor. The people assembling your team's designs

know who you are.

Working Conditions

Split between an engineering office and an active machine build floor, with periodic travel to customer manufacturing sites. On-site work requires standard PPE and the ability to move around equipment under construction, occasionally lift up to 25 pounds, and working near operating machinery. Reasonable accommodation will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this role.