What are the responsibilities and job description for the Heat Treat Engineer position at HTI?
Candidates must be eligible to work in the U.S. without sponsorship.
Induction Heat Treat Engineer
HTI is seeking an Induction Heat Treat Engineer for JTEKT North America, a global leader in automotive systems, bearing solutions, and high-performance machine tools. As part of a major expansion at its Piedmont, SC facility, JTEKT has added significant new manufacturing capacity, including new machining and assembly lines supporting advanced driveline products.
This is a hands-on process engineering role for someone who understands the science behind heat treatment and can apply it on the manufacturing floor. The Induction Heat Treat Engineer will serve as a technical resource for induction heating, hardening, quenching, and tempering processes, with responsibility for process performance, troubleshooting, tooling, continuous improvement, and new equipment implementation.
What They Offer
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Benefits beginning Day 1
- 401(k) Match
- Employer HSA Contributions
- Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
- Life Insurance
- Employee Assistance Program
- Wellness Rewards Program
- Opportunity to support newly installed manufacturing technology and expanded production capabilities
What You Need
- Associate degree in Engineering, Engineering Technology, Materials Science, Metallurgy, or a related technical field; Bachelor's degree preferred
- 3 years of experience supporting industrial heat treatment processes
- Experience with induction heating or induction hardening strongly preferred
- Working knowledge of quenching, tempering, hardness, case depth, and heat-treatment process control
- Hands-on experience troubleshooting and improving manufacturing processes
- Experience with tooling, fixtures, gauging, or heat-treatment process equipment
- Ability to analyze process data and lead root-cause investigations
- Experience supporting PFMEA, APQP, control plans, or related automotive quality requirements
- Experience with equipment installations, capital projects, process launches, or new product introductions preferred
- Automotive, driveline, bearing, gear, shaft, or other precision-component manufacturing experience highly preferred
What Your Role Will Look Like
As the Induction Heat Treat Engineer, you will help own and continuously improve the processes responsible for achieving the required hardness, case depth, durability, and dimensional performance of critical automotive components.
You will work closely with production, quality, maintenance, tooling, and engineering teams to ensure heat-treatment processes remain capable, repeatable, and production-ready.
Key responsibilities include:
- Develop, maintain, and optimize induction heating, hardening, quenching, and tempering processes
- Establish and improve process parameters to achieve required metallurgical and dimensional characteristics
- Troubleshoot issues involving hardness, case depth, distortion, cracking, process variation, tooling, and equipment performance
- Lead root-cause analysis and implement corrective actions for heat-treatment-related quality and production concerns
- Analyze process and quality data using SPC and other statistical methods to identify trends and improvement opportunities
- Support the design, development, testing, and improvement of induction coils, tooling, fixtures, and gauging
- Partner with Quality to ensure heat-treatment processes consistently meet product and customer requirements
- Support PFMEA, APQP, control plans, process capability studies, and other launch or quality documentation
- Provide technical support to production teams during day-to-day manufacturing issues
- Develop and standardize heat-treatment process methods, operating parameters, and best practices
- Support process changes, new product introductions, equipment installations, commissioning, and production launches
- Work with equipment and tooling suppliers to resolve technical issues and improve process performance
- Drive improvements in quality, scrap, downtime, cycle time, tooling life, and overall process capability
- Provide technical guidance and training to operators, technicians, and other engineering personnel regarding heat-treatment processes
The Right Fit
The strongest candidate will be someone who is comfortable moving between metallurgical principles and hands-on manufacturing problem solving. You should be able to look beyond whether a part simply passes or fails inspection and understand how induction parameters, tooling, quench conditions, material characteristics, and equipment performance affect the final product.
If you have experience owning or improving heat-treatment processes and enjoy solving complex manufacturing problems on the plant floor, this is an opportunity to play a key role in JTEKT's continued manufacturing expansion.