Engineering Manager

About Carolina Foods

Carolina Foods LLC produces high-quality Duchess branded and private-label bakery goods for retail customers nationwide. Based in Pineville in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, our bakery brings product development and manufacturing together, giving leaders a direct connection to the products, people, and decisions that drive our business.

Our people are central to our success. We value leaders who take pride in their work, share ideas, and build strong partnerships. Our commitment to safety, food safety and quality, operational excellence, and continuous improvement guides how we work and grow.

Your Role as Head of Engineering

A hands-on engineering doer, not a program administrator. This role owns the plant's forward-looking improvement agenda, making existing lines better and building the capital pipeline that makes the plant fundamentally more capable and personally does the engineering work behind it: specs, FMEAs, business cases, and startup. It does not run day-to-day reactive maintenance or the plant's full legacy PM program. What it does own outright is the technical integrity of everything it touches: every project this person leads is engineered and commissioned to a real standard, not just installed and walked away from. Success looks like a live pipeline of improvement and capital projects, each with a credible business case, delivered on time and on budget, engineered to hold up, and with realized results tracked against what was promised.

What this Role Is Not

Not a day-to-day reactive maintenance role, floor-level PM execution and shift standards stay with the Maintenance Lead. Not, on its own, a rebuild of the plant's entire legacy PM program across every existing asset, that comprehensive lift is a future Engineering Lead's mandate once the plant adds that seat. This role's reliability and FMEA discipline applies fully and personally to everything it touches, its own projects and the assets it's asked to dig into, not to the full inherited asset base on day one.

Key Responsibilities

Continuous Improvement Pipeline (Existing Lines)

• Own the loss/opportunity Pareto for existing lines — OEE, yield, changeover time, rate, and labor productivity — and convert it into a prioritized improvement pipeline.
• Apply flow/constraint analysis (Theory of Constraints) to find the plant's true system constraint before proposing a fix, rather than optimizing a line in isolation.
• Lead structured improvement events (Kaizen/DMAIC) with cross-functional teams and put a control plan behind every completed improvement so gains are sustained and visible in the data months later.

Capital Project Development, Design & Justification

• Own capital project scoping, specification, and the business case — ROI/payback, cross-functional alignment with Finance, Operations, and Quality, and the formal approval (AFE) package.
• Build and prioritize the capital project pipeline against the plant's strategic priorities, in partnership with the COO and plant leadership.
• Lead vendor/OEM selection, design review, and installation oversight personally — this role is the plant's technical authority on its own projects, not a project manager coordinating someone else's engineering.

Commissioning, Reliability & Startup (Hands-On)

• Personally treat every project as complete only once a real commissioning package is delivered: performance validated against design intent, a failure mode and criticality analysis (FMEA) completed, PM procedures and frequencies derived from that FMEA, spare parts strategy defined, and operating parameters (rate limits, setpoints) validated against real flow data — never assumed from a single output point.
• Lead or directly support root cause analysis on failures tied to this role's own projects or the plant's highest-impact assets, in partnership with the Maintenance Lead; reject "replaced the part" as a root cause.
• Own the formal handoff of new or modified equipment to the Maintenance Lead, including training, documentation, and a defined transition point before moving to the next project.
• Track realized results against the original business case for at least two full quarters post-startup and report the gap openly.

What Matters Most

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Industrial, Process, or Manufacturing Engineering, or equivalent hands-on experience in a highly automated manufacturing environment.
• Track record personally leading capital projects from spec through startup — not just coordinating others' engineering — ideally in food or CPG manufacturing.
• Demonstrated continuous improvement leadership (Lean, Six Sigma, or equivalent) with results tied to OEE, yield, or throughput gains.
• Working knowledge of FMEA, RCA methodology, and PM strategy development as engineering disciplines applied hands-on, not administered.
• Strong financial acumen — comfortable building and defending an ROI/payback case to Finance and executive leadership.

Preferred:

• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
• Experience with automated packaging/wrapping equipment and high-speed bakery or food production lines.
• Familiarity with capital appropriation (AFE) processes in a PE-backed or multi-site manufacturing environment.
• Familiarity with CMMS/EAM platforms (e.g., RedZone).

Leadership Standards:

• Does the engineering personally — specs, FMEAs, and validated parameters — rather than delegating the technical substance and managing only the schedule.
• Builds the business case on real data and conservative assumptions — never sells a project on a number that won't hold up under scrutiny.
• Protects the pipeline from becoming a firefighting queue; escalates instead of quietly absorbing reactive work that belongs elsewhere.
• Reports realized projectresults and technical limitations honestly, including projects that fell short.

Skills for Success:

• Hands-on engineering: Personally, develop specifications, technical analyses, FMEAs, and validated operating parameters and maintains ownership of the technical substance.
• Project and budget management: Integrates scope, schedule, resources, cost forecasts, vendor commitments, and risk controls to deliver approved projects.
• Financial and analytical judgment: Challenges assumptions, uses reliable operating data, and distinguishes projected benefits from verified results.
• Systems thinking and problem solving: Uses flow analysis, constraint analysis, and structured RCA to address causes and improve plant-wide performance.
• Influence and communication: Leads across functions without direct supervisory authority, explains technical tradeoffs clearly, and reports setbacks honestly.
• Execution and sustainability: Protects agreed priorities, documents decisions, trains operating owners, and follows results through commissioning, handoff, and sustained operation.

Work Environment and Physical Demands:

• Onsite role in a high-volume industrial bakery, combining plant-floor leadership with office work for planning, analysis, and project coordination.
• Requires walking and standing in production areas and accessing equipment areas for inspection and startup support. Conditions may include heat, noise, moving equipment, and material-handling traffic.
• Required personal protective equipment, hygiene practices, and safe-work procedures must be followed. Flexibility is needed for off-shift work, weekends, shutdowns, emergencies, and project-related travel
• Essential functions may be performed with reasonable accommodation.

Come Join Us!

• Bring your engineering expertise, leadership, and passion for solving problems to Carolina Foods. Help build reliable bakery operations, develop strong technical teams, and turn investments into lasting results. If you enjoy hands-on leadership and working with senior leaders to improve performance, we invite you to apply or contact our Human Resources team.