Engineer III, Plastics Technical Sourcing Engineering

JOB DESCRIPTION

Work Schedule

Standard (Mon-Fri)

Environmental Conditions

Office

Job Description

As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you'll discover meaningful work that positively impacts a global scale. Join our colleagues in bringing our Mission to life every day to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. We provide our global teams with the resources needed to achieve individual career goals while helping to take science a step beyond by developing solutions for some of the world's toughest challenges, such as protecting the environment, ensuring food safety, and helping find cures for cancer.

Discover Impactful Work

The Engineer III, Technical Sourcing Engineering (TSE) is responsible for providing technical leadership across Thermo Fisher Scientific's plastics supply base. This role partners with Procurement, R&D, Operations, Quality, Regulatory, Product Management, and external suppliers to drive supplier technical excellence throughout the product lifecycle.

The successful candidate will lead supplier qualification and development activities, alternate sourcing and dual sourcing initiatives, manufacturing transfers, capacity expansions, product scale-up, and continuous improvement projects. This position also plays a key role in resolving supplier-related technical issues, supporting New Product Introductions (NPIs), and identifying opportunities for cost savings, productivity improvements, and supply chain resiliency.

A Day in the Life

As a member of the Technical Sourcing Engineering team, you will collaborate across a highly matrixed global organization to ensure robust manufacturing processes and reliable supplier performance. Responsibilities include:

• Lead technical sourcing projects including alternate sourcing, dual sourcing, supplier transfers, and manufacturing resourcing initiatives.

• Partner with suppliers to improve manufacturing capability, capacity, process controls, and product quality.

• Support New Product Introduction (NPI) programs by ensuring supplier readiness, manufacturability, and successful commercialization.

• Investigate and resolve supplier manufacturing and quality issues using structured problem-solving methodologies.

• Drive productivity and cost reduction initiatives through design optimization, process improvements, and supplier innovation.

• Evaluate manufacturing processes including injection molding, blow molding, thermoforming, tubing extrusion, film converting, die cutting, and secondary operations.

• Provide technical expertise during supplier audits, process validations, tooling reviews, and engineering change activities.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including R&D, Manufacturing Engineering, Procurement, Quality, Regulatory Affairs, and Operations to deliver successful project outcomes.

• Develop technical documentation including project plans, engineering reports, validation protocols, risk assessments, and supplier qualification documentation.

• Support supplier performance monitoring and continuous improvement initiatives across a global supplier network.

How Will You Get Here?

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Plastics Engineering, Materials Science, Manufacturing Engineering, or another related engineering discipline required.

Experience

• 3+ years of engineering experience in plastics manufacturing, product development, manufacturing engineering, supplier engineering, or technical sourcing.

• Experience working with plastic manufacturing processes including injection molding, blow molding, thermoforming, extrusion, or related technologies.

• Experience managing technical projects with external suppliers.

• Experience supporting regulated industries such as medical device, life sciences, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, or other highly regulated manufacturing environments preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Strong knowledge of plastics processing, tooling design, process development, and troubleshooting.

• Understanding of Design for Manufacturability (DFM), Design for Assembly (DFA), and process capability analysis.

• Experience with supplier qualification, validation, and process transfer activities.

• Familiarity with Design of Experiments (DOE), Statistical Process Control (SPC), root cause analysis, FMEA, and other quality engineering tools.

• Knowledge of engineering change management and regulated quality systems including ISO 9001 and ISO 13485.

• Experience with CAD software such as SolidWorks, Creo, or equivalent.

• Working knowledge of enterprise systems such as SAP, Agile PLM, Oracle, or MasterControl preferred.

• Strong project management and organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.

• Excellent analytical, technical problem-solving, and decision-making abilities.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with experience preparing technical reports and presenting to cross-functional teams.

• Ability to build collaborative relationships across internal teams and external suppliers.

• Self-motivated, results-oriented, and capable of working independently in a fast-paced global environment.

• Experience with sterilization processes, secondary manufacturing operations, and automated assembly is desirable.

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite including Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Project.

• Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 15%.

This position does not offer relocation assistance.