Senior Product Manager

Job Description

Job Description

KHS is a subsidiary of Salzgitter AG. As one of the world's leading manufacturers of filling and packaging systems for beverages and liquid food we are a world-class player. Our customers have trusted in our passionate pioneering spirit and first-class technologies for over 150 years. However, we can only remain world class if we continue to find new employees who make just as high demands of themselves and the quality of their work as our customers make of us at KHS. Are you one of them?

The Senior Product Manager manages a particular KHS product line and delivers accurate, commercially competitive quotations for the company’s machine or conversion projects and supports the sales process with technical expertise. 

Your Responsibilities: 

• Reviews Requests for Quotes (RFQs) from Sales personnel or customers; analyzes and evaluates customer needs from customer specification sheets, drawings and application requirements.
• Supports and participates in sales process including sales calls, presentations and qualification of customers; provides support and technical information for sales personnel in the field and management; may visit customer sites to assess environment and applications

• Serve as the subject matter expert for KHS blow molding technology, including stretch blow molding processes, preform design requirements, container performance characteristics, and machine performance optimization across beverage, liquid food applications, and other adjacent markets.

• Analyze market trends, customer requirements, and competitive technologies to define product roadmaps for blow molding equipment, with a focus on lightweighting, sustainability initiatives, recycled PET (rPET) processing, energy efficiency, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

• Provide technical guidance and application support for key customer projects, including bottle design feasibility, preform-to-container conversion analysis, production line integration, capacity optimization, and lifecycle cost evaluation.

• Develops and provides creative technical solutions for customer packaging problems; may provide engineered solutions which include conceptual layouts, diagrams, description of functions etc.
• Specifies the proper machine, components and technology for customer’s application; collaborates with other departmental leaders to create technically and financially accurate project estimates; utilizing existing pricing structures; accesses information from a variety of sources for costs; interacts with other product specialists as needed.
• Prepares proposals and quotations or works with commercial administrative group; oversees order confirmation and executes risk reviews; gathers missing technical information and incorporates into quotation; serves as quotation guardian for product specialty; follows ISO procedures for sales activity.
• May sell and manage retrofits, upgrades and conversions of capital equipment for installed equipment base including product expansion and development programs; manages received orders and contract obligations with supporting staff until machine acceptance.
• Maintains margin and pricing indices and product information that can be referenced on demand by sales personnel and management.
• Works closely with engineering in Business Areas and Competency centers on product line development/new product definitions; collaborates with other functional areas on the commercialization process.
• Tracks and analyzes customer needs, and proposal, sales order activity of the product line for management
• Use market information to analyze the product market; identifies market trends; provides information for new and emerging product variations, develops new product definitions.

 

Your Profile:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Engineering or related field
• 5+ years’ technical experience (engineering or sales) with packaging machinery
• 3+ years’ experience in developing quotations for complex capital equipment
• Equivalent combination of experience and education will be considered 
• Ability to travel up to 30% of the time. 

 

Benefits:

• Medical, Dental, Vision insurance offered at 30 days of employment 
• Generous Educational Reimbursement program
• Company sponsored Life and Disability Insurance
• Paid Time Off
• Ten (10) Paid Holidays per year 
• 401K with Company Match

In order to ensure our success in the future, too, we need first-class employees – and we also have plenty to offer them.