Senior Manager Manufacturing Engineering

Travel: Approximately one week per month to Cincinnati.

Employment Type: Permanent / Direct Hire

Base Salary: up to $200,000 annually, with some flexibility for highly qualified candidates.

Visa Sponsorship: Available if needed.

We are seeking an experienced Senior Manager, Manufacturing Engineering to lead the transition of complex, highly engineered products from limited production into scalable commercial manufacturing.

This is a hands-on, player-coach leadership role requiring deep technical manufacturing engineering expertise, proven people management capabilities, and experience building manufacturing processes and production systems from the ground up.

The ideal candidate has successfully guided products through new product introduction (NPI), limited production, and commercial scaling while developing engineering teams, establishing disciplined operating processes, and driving continuous improvement.

This position offers an opportunity to shape manufacturing capabilities during a significant production expansion, with direct responsibility for engineering execution, process development, equipment qualification, and team performance.

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of manufacturing engineers while remaining personally involved in complex technical projects and production challenges.
• Translate engineering designs into safe, repeatable, cost-effective, and scalable manufacturing processes that support increasing production volumes.
• Design, develop, implement, and qualify manufacturing tooling, fixtures, equipment, and production processes.
• Establish and maintain manufacturing documentation, including PFMEAs, control plans, work instructions, SOPs, and manufacturing bills of materials (MBOMs).
• Collaborate with Design Engineering to implement design-for-manufacturability (DFM) principles throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Lead capital equipment programs, including business justification, vendor selection, procurement, installation, budget oversight, and equipment qualification.
• Conduct process validation, capability studies, measurement system evaluations, and statistical process control activities to ensure consistent manufacturing quality.
• Implement Lean manufacturing principles, standard work, material flow improvements, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Establish engineering priorities, project milestones, workload management, resource planning, and team accountability.
• Partner with Production, Quality, Supply Chain, and Engineering teams to achieve manufacturing readiness and production scaling objectives.
• Drive root cause analysis and corrective/preventive actions (CAPA) to resolve manufacturing issues and prevent recurrence.
• Build a culture of operational excellence, safety, structured problem-solving, and disciplined engineering practices.

• Manufacturing Engineering & Productionization: Demonstrated experience transitioning complex engineered products from CAD/prototype and NPI through limited production into repeatable, cost-effective, safe, and scalable manufacturing, including design for manufacturability (DFM).
• Engineering Team Leadership & Management: Minimum 3 years directly managing manufacturing engineers, including team development, resource planning, workload management, goal setting, milestones, and accountability. Must be a hands-on player-coach capable of personally owning technical deliverables.
• Manufacturing Process Development & Validation: Hands-on expertise designing, developing, implementing, and validating manufacturing processes, including process capability studies, measurement systems, statistical process control, root cause analysis, and corrective/preventive actions (CAPA).
• Tooling, Fixtures & Capital Equipment: Hands-on experience designing, developing, and qualifying manufacturing tooling and fixtures for complex assemblies, plus capital equipment ownership from business justification and vendor selection through procurement, installation, budget management, and IQ/OQ/PQ qualification.
• Lean Manufacturing & Operational Excellence: Practical experience implementing Lean manufacturing, structured problem-solving, standard work, value stream mapping, 5S, Kaizen, waste reduction, material flow and handling improvements, and continuous improvement practices.
• Manufacturing Documentation & CAD/PLM: Hands-on experience developing and maintaining PFMEAs, control plans, work instructions, SOPs, and manufacturing bills of materials (MBOMs), with…