What are the responsibilities and job description for the Staff Engineer, NPI position at kohler?
Location: Onsite, 4 days per week - Kohler, WI
Opportunity
As a Staff Engineer, New Product Integration (NPI) provide technical
and operational leadership for New Product Integration (NPI) initiatives,
serving as a manufacturing subject matter expert and thought partner to Product
Development, Operations, Supply Chain, and Quality teams. This role will drive
outcomes through influence, deep expertise, and systems-level thinking rather
than positional authority, while synchronizing with plant NPI and Operations
teams to ensure new products are “Right the First Time,” achieving Safety,
Quality, Delivery, and Cost.
Specific Responsibilities
- Act as the primary manufacturing engineering
authority on assigned NPD/NPI programs, shaping manufacturing
strategy, process design, and execution models to ensure products are Right
the First Time across Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost.
- Lead advanced Design for Manufacturability and
Assembly (DFMA), FMEA, process capability analysis, and design
reviews, identifying systemic risks and recommending design or process
changes with enterprise impact.
- Define and standardize manufacturing process requirements, tooling concepts, and engineering specifications, ensuring alignment with global manufacturing standards and regulatory expectations.
End-to-End NPI Ownership
- Own and integrate Operations deliverables within
the Global Kitchen & Bath NPD process, ensuring manufacturing
readiness, launch robustness, and proactive risk mitigation across all
phases of development.
- Serve as the operations integrator across
quality, manufacturing engineering, supply chain, data services, and
materials, resolving complex cross-functional tradeoffs and aligning
execution plans across multiple plants and regions.
- Develop and maintain plant-level execution
strategies and timelines, synchronizing local manufacturing plans with
enterprise program milestones and launch commitments.
Cost,
Capacity & Supply Chain Strategy
- Build and maintain robust product cost models,
actively influencing design, sourcing, and process decisions to meet cost,
margin, and launch targets cash cost
modeling, capacity assessment, and global asset optimization, providing
clear recommendations to operations and sourcing leadership.
- Partner with Supply Chain, Purchasing, and Supplier Quality to define long-term fulfillment strategies, including PFEP development, supplier readiness, and supply chain resilience.
Execution
Excellence & Risk Management
- Drive time-to-market improvements through
process optimization, parallel development strategies, and elimination of
systemic inefficiencies.
- Apply advanced engineering judgment to complex,
ambiguous problems, independently making decisions, justifying risk,
and escalating appropriately based on business impact.
Influence,
Communication & Knowledge Leadership
- Present clear, data-driven recommendations and
project status to senior operations leadership (Manager, Director, VP
level), translating technical complexity into actionable insights.
- Mentor and provide technical guidance to engineers and
cross-functional partners, strengthening organizational capability without
direct supervisory responsibility.
- Improvement of engineering standards, best
practices, and knowledge systems, ensuring lessons learned are
captured and reused across the enterprise.
- Liaise closely with all levels of production, engineering, NPD, purchasing, and marketing providing clear information where necessary. Use relationships to maintain a network to support Production Strategies.
- Present project status and escalations to multiple levels of operations leadership including Managers/Directors/VP.
- This position will coordinate the development of systematic tool design and engineering functions required for production of products at Kohler Co. utilizing CAD technology.