Description

GENTEX AT A GLANCE:

At Gentex Corporation, we’ve created an environment where great ideas and great people can thrive. Leveraging a history that spans over 125 years, Gentex is a global leader in personal protection and situational awareness solutions for defense forces, emergency responders, and industrial personnel operating in high performance environments. Join our multinational team of exceptional and dedicated employees around the world and work on challenging and rewarding projects, grow your skills, and advance your career all while making a positive difference in the lives of our customers. Together, you and Gentex can build a career that’s uniquely yours.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: 

• B.S. degree in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering 
• 8-12 years of product development experience with emphasis in multi-disciplined technical management, including 6-8 years managing cross-functional project and/or program teams in a defense company.
• 3-5 years of experience deploying lean and/or six-sigma excellence programs, focused on driving product development value stream improvements, effective project prioritization, resource utilization, and talent acquisition, within a matrix geographically dispersed organization
• Professional enhancement courses in leadership, business and product development related areas of project planning, estimating and budgeting, scheduling, personnel management, quality and risk reduction.

ABOUT THE JOB!

The Director of Engineering is responsible for the Defense Respiratory Value Stream (DRVS) product portfolio and services. This role will oversee development and sustainment products and services that meet specifications, budgets, and achieve on-time delivery to business and customer contracts and purchase orders. We will look to this position to establish and govern engineering department policy, processes and resources to ensure New Product Development (NPD) reviews are efficient and effective in delivering successful outcomes to the Quality Management System (QMS). This role will develop metrics and scorecards, ensure objectives are communicated, tracked and achieved. This role brings together cross functional, cross site functions, and multi-disciplinary staff and organizes the groups to plan, formulate, and agree upon plans for the deployment of product development resources. Defines and implements resource deployment in conjunction with product road maps, voice of the customer input, and managerial requirements. Champions site engineering standardization and continuous improvement initiatives, and shall be responsible for compliance with applicable site quality systems. 

Gentex offers a robust benefit package- including, but not limited to, medical coverages, 401k, paid time off and excellent work schedules including a 9/80 work week. 

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Primary Responsibilities as the Department Leader:

• Lead the site Engineering staff and collaborate with and support other site Engineering departments as necessary to execute approved product development activities, and continuously assess talent and equipment resource availability, budgets, and schedules.
• Provide objective input for product development ideas to ensure appropriate alignment with staff skills, and optimize use of resource pool.
• Make effective decisions on what tasks might be best for contract or outsourcing, and involve appropriate stakeholders in these decisions.
• Collaborate effectively with other functional groups to meet annual Enterprise goals that directly correlate with engineering department execution.
• Instill, monitor and maintain professional interpersonal behaviors and engagement between staff and other departments and between Engineering staff and customers, partners and suppliers.

Essential Functions:

• Perform significant role as the lead in the critical independent evaluation of project /program estimates for realism of a technical approach to meeting requirements, risk reduction methods, budget detail, schedules to complete, and availability of appropriate resources.
• Implement, monitor, mentor and reinforce the disciplines of Systems Engineering and Integration, AS9100 procedures for Design Reviews, Inputs/Outputs, and New Product Introduction stages and gates to ensure meeting customer product, and company contractual and investment performance expectations.
• Ensure that personnel management discipline, career path mentoring and acknowledgements of staff efforts by direct reports and their reports is occurring on regular basis via one-on-one performance feedback interfaces, and with Human Resources if necessary, to align two-way expectations to reduce destructive turn-over.
• Implement and sustain a culture of continuous improvement in analyzing Engineering department operations and infrastructure with specific objectives and targeted metrics, tracking of progress, and reporting out results.
• Represent company as technical lead authority with customers, partners and suppliers as necessary.
• Responsible for meeting Engineering and other Company department’s needs and delivery schedules for annual department budget, personnel annual performance evaluations, monthly financial inputs and reviews, and quarterly inputs for business meetings.
• Hold regular internal staff meetings to facilitate engagement, communicate activities, and obtain feedback, and communicate regularly with Engineering management peers at other locations.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• Management of multi-disciplinary engineering functions including research of future product enabling technologies, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, systems engineering, engineering design, CAD/modeling, critical parameter analysis, test and evaluation, data/documentation and prototyping.
• Estimating labor, material, specialty subcontract support, and travel for applications and problem resolution research, engineering concept generation, systems engineering discipline execution of customer’s requirements and risk reduction activities.
• Budgeting and tracking annual department activities.
• Workforce talent planning, evaluation, mentoring and motivation via personnel performance management techniques.
• Effectively communicating and executing critical thinking evaluation of approaches to problems, projects and programs.
• Deployment/delegation of project management and task execution coordination to direct staff with regular monitoring oversight, alignment and corrective adjustments as necessary.
• Regular use of lessons–learned, post-mortem feedback techniques before, during and after a project to foster continuous improvement.
• Establishing and sustaining effective use, communication and review of metrics to hold staff accountable for execution of assigned tasks.
• Implementing and sustaining collaborative team dynamics within local engineering functions and with other location peers.

ANNUAL SALARY RANGE:

$165,000 - $190,000

TO APPLY:

Visit: https://gentexcorp.com/careers/

LOCATION:

Gentex’s Rancho Cucamonga facility is in Rancho Cucamonga, CA is a city of about 177,000 residents located just south of the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and Angeles National Forest in San Bernardino County, California, United States. About 37 miles east of Downtown Los Angeles, Rancho Cucamonga is the 19th most populous city in southern California and the 27th state-wide. The city's seal, which centers on a cluster of grapes, alludes to the city's agricultural history including winemaking. Also, the Ontario Reign Hockey and Quakers Baseball teams are located 20 minutes from the Rancho Cucamonga location.

At Gentex, we don’t just accept difference—we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. Gentex Corporation is an Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their protected veteran status or on the basis of disability. Gentex is an E-Verify Participant. Pre-employment drug/alcohol/background screening is required. If you have a disability and would like to request an accommodation in order to apply for a position with Gentex, please call our Human Resources department at (570) 282-3550.