Director, Product Design Engineering

Position Summary

The Director, Product Design Engineering leader will provide Engineering and Technical organizational leadership to innovate, develop & maintain industry leading consumer and brand centric products in the pet industry. This individual will embrace Petmate’s vision of brand leadership and partner with the leadership team to continue to deliver and drive profitable growth in both new and existing markets for all product categories. This role will accomplish the vision by first building then executing near and long-term engineering and technology strategies aligned with corporate strategy and will take the company to the next level of profitable growth.

This Leader will be best-in-class in product development and technology commercialization experiences to challenge the status quo and to deepen world-class product creation and thought leadership capabilities. The primary responsibility of this role is to lead and manage the product design engineering function to develop innovative consumer and brand centric products, improve existing products, and optimize cost.

Essential Duties And Responsibilites

Leadership & Strategy:

• The company seeks a “player/coach” who will assess the current organization and talent with the goal of building and developing a powerful team that works collaboratively and aligns with the culture and values of Petmate.
• This leader will drive building a culture of innovation, urgency and deliver cadence of robust design products with quality & modularity.
• This leader will exhibit exacting standards of integrity and have a very strong core belief in “doing the right thing” and be resilient and persistent in ensuring that integrity is maintained at the highest level. This role requires an individual who can work effectively within teams and across businesses and functions to resolve conflicts early in an open and direct manner while communicating candidly with senior management peers and employees.
  
  

Strategic Technological Acumen

• This leader will have a strong sense of urgency, who brings along a demonstrated success in driving breakthrough engineering and technology strategies through a track record of revenue & profit growth. This leader is to lead new product development initiatives from concept development through the implementation.
• This leader will be experienced in developing technological roadmaps that are aligned with product strategies. This Leader should develop/acquire/leverage processes, tools and systems to enhance organizational product development speed, quality, and decision-making.
  
  

Talent, Skill & Team Building

• This leader must have a strong knowledge and understanding of engineering, technology and project management, while also being experienced in building a highly passionate energetic team of talented individuals.
• This role requires an individual who can work effectively within teams and across businesses and functions. It is also essential for this leader to enhance a culture of coaching, mentoring and learning.
• This leader will facilitate and nurture cross-functional collaboration and partnership involving members from other departments including Product Management, Supply Chain, Sales, Operations, Finance, Accounting and Customer Service.
• Working with external partners to build and leverage skills is essential to meet company’s growth & innovation objectives.
• The selected leader will leverage outside companies, universities and agencies to supplement talent, skills & other resources needed to be the innovation leader in the industry.
  
  

Other Required Areas Of Knowledge & Experience

• Establish the company’s new product development vision and lead all aspects of the company’s stage-gate efforts. Provide the technical leadership that designs, develops, verifies and validates new products/technologies appropriate for the consumer, market and manufacturing. Collaborate closely with all functional areas necessary to aggressively advance products from proof-of-concept through development, validation, product launch and support.
• Understand blow molding, injection molding, and metal parts related manufacturing critical to the success of this role. Developing products that follow modularity in design is beneficial to leverage capital investment & efficiency.
• Build competency, internally and/or externally, to deliver IoT based products including APP to be leader in this category.
• Review and implement improvements to product development processes including stage gate and project prioritization in line with enterprise strategies.
• Enhance the talent management strategy for product development. Attract and retain the very highest caliber of product development leaders. Develop talent requirements and assume responsibility for assessing, planning, recruiting, training and motivating team members. Provide Six-Sigma culture for robust product delivery to consumers.
• Work with the leadership team to instill a sustainable culture of consumer and brand focused innovation.
• Plan and direct the identification, collection and evaluation of new product ideas or strategic product extensions to determine their potential to address customer needs and to achieve goals in revenue growth and market share.
  
  

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES: Manage Engineering team

Qualificiation Requirements

• Bachelor’s of Science degree in engineering required; Master’s degree preferred.
• 10 years of experience leading Engineering for world-class product development team.
• Knowledge of consumer-centered innovations, pet industry preferred.
• Experience leading and managing Engineering teams with off-site, partnered and sub-contracted resources.
• Strong project management and communication skills with the ability to manage diverse, simultaneous projects of varying complexities. Provide consistent message across entire organization.
• Demonstrated cross-functional collaboration – strong in forging relationships across groups and driving buy-in and commitment towards solutions that may be challenging or new.
• Demonstrated ability developing innovative winning new products. Demonstrated ability to develop consumer and/or technology driven innovation.
• Highly organized around priorities, quality and meeting deadlines.
• Highly self-motivated with a strong bias for action.
• Experience in a global environment working with customers and suppliers.
  
  

Petmate is an Equal Opportunity Employer and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

PI266756571