Manufacturing Engineering Manager

Job Details:
Level: Management,

Job Location:

Dayton Office - Dayton, MN 55369, Position Type:
Full Time, Education Level: 4 Year Degree, Salary Range: $ - $ Salary/year, Job Category:
Engineering, Gradian is an engineering-led, full-line thermal solutions partner serving data center and other mission‑critical, commercial, and industrial markets. Headquartered in Maple Grove, MN, with additional facilities across North America, we design and manufacture liquid cooling systems, air handling equipment, heat rejection units, and modular, factory‑assembled thermal management solutions.

Gradian was founded through the unification of four complementary, established brands: MAS HVAC, Daedex, DeepCoolAI, and Eco Chillers. Together, we act as a single‑source provider, deploying cooling technologies as scalable systems optimized for efficiency, spatial constraints, and overall performance. With a vertically integrated engineering and manufacturing model, we pair rapid design turnaround with precision fabrication, so customers can move faster on complex projects where reliability, timeline, and quality all matter.

At Gradian, you’ll work alongside others who get genuinely fired up by complex problems, see your work go from first sketch to job site in weeks, not years, and know that while we’re developing the technologies critical for AI infrastructure to scale, our culture remains people‑first by design.

It is core to our identity that we operate as one team — driving to win together, energizing others, and building lasting relationships that make the work fun and rewarding.

The Manufacturing Engineering Manager leads the manufacturing engineering function at Maple grove/Dayton, MN — a team of manufacturing engineers, maintenance — and is personally accountable for process design, tooling, layout, quality system support, and continuous improvement across our Air Handling Unit, DX, Chiller, and CDU product lines. This is a player‑coach role: you will lead the team while staying technically hands‑on with the plant’s toughest process problems.

You will serve as the manufacturing engineering owner within new product introduction programs, ensuring process readiness and manufacturability at each program gate, and you will be the plant’s primary driver of automation, digital tooling, and Industry 4.0 adoption — turning standards set at the network level into working reality on your floor.

• Lead and develop a team of manufacturing engineers, maintenance — setting goals, prioritizing projects, and building technical capability
• Serve as the manufacturing engineering owner within NPI programs, accountable for process readiness, tooling, and manufacturability at each program gate, partnering with Design Engineering and Program Management for on time launch
• Implement Design for Manufacturability and Assembly (DFM/DFA) practices early in the design cycle
• Design, build, and continuously improve manufacturing processes, tooling, fixtures, and plant layout to maximize safety, quality, throughput, and cost efficiency
• Develop and justify capital equipment requests; approve capital expenditures
• Eliminate production bottlenecks through line balancing, time studies, and capacity planning
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives using Lean and 80/20 methodologies, driving measurable gains in yield, cycle time, first-pass quality, and OEE
• Ensure manufacturing processes are qualified and controlled via PFMEA and control plans, partnering with Quality on critical characteristic identification
• Maintain accurate, compliant manufacturing documentation — routings, BOMs, work instructions, and process plans
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective action for manufacturing and hardware…