Director Of Engineering

Director Of Engineering

The director of engineering is a senior leader responsible for shaping swagelok's engineering strategy across new product development and lifecycle management. This role drives innovation, execution, and alignment to deliver high-quality, profitable fluid system solutions that meet evolving customer and market needs. The individual leads both new product development and product engineering teams—ensuring speed, quality, and financial performance. They collaborate across the business, including commercial marketing, operations, sourcing, and sscs, to address technical challenges, support capacity planning, and prioritize opportunities that maximize enterprise profitability.

The ideal candidate is a visionary leader with strong commercial expertise and business acumen. They inspire high-performing teams, communicate a compelling vision, and consistently deliver results through strategic thinking and cross-functional collaboration.

Essential duties and responsibilities:

• Build and mentor high-performing engineering teams.
• Participate in executive strategy discussions and cross-functional planning.
• Communicate effectively with internal and external stakeholders, including customers, distributors, and partners.
• Ensure deliverables meet performance, cost, quality, and regulatory requirements.
• Develop and translate strategy into actionable execution across the organization.
• Understand and apply corporate strategic objectives to position engineering as a problem-solving partner across target markets.
• Develop and execute the r&d strategy aligned with corporate growth objectives.
• Identify and evaluate emerging technologies and trends for integration into future products.
• Lead cross-functional teams in the design, development, and validation of new products.
• Champion design for manufacturability, reliability, and sustainability.
• Stay abreast of advanced product development tools (e.g., fea, cfd, plm) to drive innovation and cost efficiency.
• Lead corporate innovation initiatives and engage with universities and third-party partners on new technologies.
• Develop and optimize testing capabilities to meet evolving customer needs.
• Drive the product roadmap and lifecycle strategy.
• Collaborate with marketing, sales, and customers to define product requirements and value propositions.
• Monitor market trends, competitive landscape, and customer feedback to guide product evolution.
• Manage and optimize the product development process to ensure timely, high-quality, and profitable launches.
• Ensure ongoing development of technical skills and engineering best practices across the organization.
• Lead remote teams responsible for product design on iom platforms.
• Develop and execute the organization's intellectual property (ip) strategy.
• Co-lead the product commercialization committee and the engineering project management office.
• Work with functional leaders to prioritize opportunities and allocate resources that drive revenue growth through new products, modifications, and services.
• Collaborate with marketing to understand key markets and lead road mapping efforts.
• Partner with distributors and customers to understand current and future product needs.

Approximate # of direct reports (if applicable) – 3-6 direct managers and ~80 indirect reports.

Budget responsibility (if applicable) – departmental budget and project portfolio (expense and capital).

Education and/or work experience requirements:

Required:

• An undergraduate degree in an engineering discipline is required.
• 15 years of progressive experience in a premium design and manufacturing environment, including 5+ years in a leadership or management role.
• Deep understanding of engineering principles, product development lifecycle, discrete manufacturing, and quality systems.
• Demonstrated history of successful product development, commercialization, and ongoing product management with a focus on driving new revenue and maximizing profitability.
• Demonstrated track record of developing and sustaining effective and energized working relationships with leaders to align people at all levels with the organization's strategic objectives.
• Experience in strategic planning, translating high level objectives into actionable plans, and presenting to senior executives.
• Ability to recruit high level talent; read people accurately, diagnose strengths, weaknesses, potential and hire the best.
• Ability to lead, motivate, coach, and develop the team to improve individual and overall group performance.
• Strong prioritization and project management skills, including resource allocation, budgeting, and timeline management.

Preferred:

• Mba
• Masters degree in a technical field
• Experience with industry-specific tools, technologies, and methodologies (e.g., cad, fea, agile, lean, six sigma)

Critical competencies:

• Can effectively work with people to get things done - able to connect, compel, and inspire.
• Manages people well; gets the most and best out of the people he/she has; sets and communicates guiding goals; measures accomplishments, holds people accountable, and gives useful feedback; delegates and develops; keeps people informed; provides coaching for today and for the future.
• Ability to continuously apply and balance a transactional leadership style (planning, organizing, coordinating, direction and controlling) with a transformational leadership style (visioning, values/culture building, role modeling, enabling, communicating, and confidence building).
• Is skilled at getting individuals, teams, and an entire organization to perform at a higher level and to embrace change; negotiates skillfully to achieve a fair outcome or promote a common cause; communicates a compelling vision and is committed to what needs to be done; inspires others; builds motivated, high-performing teams; understands what motivates different people.
• Good with all forms of thinking, broad and deep, from conceptual, to creative, to analytical.
• Ability to understand highly complex engineering concepts and make good decisions that protect the brand and reputation of the company.
• Excellent business acumen, including a high sense of accountability.
• Passion for doing the right thing.

Working conditions and/or physical requirements:

• Working conditions associated with normal office environment.
• Ability to operate standard office equipment (e.g., computer, telephone, copier, printer, etc.).
• Ability to effectively communicate in both small and large groups and settings.
• Ability to traverse between multiple locations in ohio and pennsylvania as needed.
• Domestic and/or international travel is required, minimum 25%.
• Ability to safely and successfully perform the essential job functions consistent with the ada, fmla and other federal, state, and local standards, including meeting qualitative and quantitative productivity standards.
• Ability to maintain regular, punctual attendance consistent with the ada, fmla and other federal, state, and local standards.

Swagelok provides a comprehensive package of valuable benefits called total rewards focused on health and wellness, compensation, retirement planning, and supplemental rewards.

To apply: 1. click 'apply now' to the role of interest, upload your resume and complete the application. 2. those that match our qualifications will be contacted to schedule a phone interview. congratulations on taking the first step to be connected. be valued. be you.

Swagelok is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. applicants are selected without regard to race, ethnicity, creed, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, pregnancy-related medical conditions, age, national origin or ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran/military status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristic under federal, state or local law.

Swagelok will make reasonable accommodations in compliance with the americans with disabilities act of 1990, the americans with disabilities act amendments act of 2008, and ohio state law.

This job summary is intended to be brief and does not list all the duties for this position. nothing in this job description should be construed as an express or implied contract of employment. swagelok is an at-will employer, which means that either party is free to terminate the employment relationship at any time, without any advanced notice, for any reason or no reason.