Manager, Application Engineering

Join HARTING! A leader in connectivity products and custom solutions…..

We are seeking a Manager of Application Engineering (Hybrid in Elgin, IL) to join our growing team. The Manager, Application Engineering leads the HARTING North America Application Engineering team, including Field Application Engineers and senior technical application consultants. The role ensures timely, high-quality technical and application support for customers, distributors, and Sales, including deeper, customer-embedded design support. This leader develops the team, prioritizes resources, advances knowledge-transfer tools and systems, and ensures customer-service and department KPIs are met in alignment with HARTING strategic priorities.

Periodic travel is required.

HARTING aims to be a trusted advisor to HARTING customers and positions itself as the go-to source expert for industrial connectivity solutions. We partner directly with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Distribution partners for standard product, designed-in value-added products, and Product Development initiatives.

• Drives demand creation and design-in wins by ensuring accurate and timely application support, product and solution selection, BOM development, samples or prototypes, proposals, and customer presentations.
• Builds team capability for customer-embedded design support, including early engagement in requirements, architecture, validation, product integration, and complex strategic opportunities.
• Partners with Sales and Product Management to qualify and prioritize opportunities, coordinate technical resources, capture Voice of Customer, and advance design-in activity.
• Aligns Application Engineering coverage, specialist expertise, travel, training, and customer support with HARTING strategic priorities, target markets, and key accounts.

• Ensures consistently responsive, accurate, and high-quality support for current applications and serves as escalation leader for complex or critical customer issues.
• Establishes and manages KPIs and service expectations for responsiveness, closure, customer satisfaction, workload, opportunity support, training effectiveness, and tool adoption.
• Creates scalable knowledge-transfer systems and oversees technical playbooks, application guides, onboarding and training resources, selection aids, BOM tools, troubleshooting guidance, and reusable solutions.
• Identifies skill gaps, assigns subject-matter ownership, and coordinates mentoring, cross-training, product training, and access to regional and global expertise.
• Advances the tools and processes used to receive, triage, assign, track, resolve, document, and report technical requests, including CRM, case-management, knowledge, digital, AI-enabled, and self-service tools.
• Partners with Product Management, Engineering, Operations, Customer Success, Marketing, and global HARTING teams on customer issues, product improvements, NPI, technical content, and training.

• Responsible for team planning, hiring, onboarding, goal setting, coaching, development, performance management, career progression, and succession planning.
• Establishes a regular operating cadence to review workload, commitments, opportunities, escalations, travel, skills, and capacity; reallocates resources as priorities change.
• Develops and retains a high-performing, customer-focused team and future technical leaders and fosters accountability, collaboration, continuous learning, and knowledge sharing.
• Acts as escalation point for team, customer, and cross-functional issues and drives team structure, tools, processes, and metrics for onsite, remote, and customer-embedded resources.

Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or related technical discipline; equivalent directly related education and experience may be considered.

7+ years of relevant application engineering, engineering, product management, technical sales, or customer-facing technical experience, including demonstrated team leadership.

Experience leading distributed technical teams and supporting complex design-in or customer-embedded application programs is preferred.

• Comfortable with 20-30% travel.

HARTING Americas is a subsidiary of HARTING Technology Group, a German-based global leader in industrial connectivity solutions. We develop, manufacture, and sell the world's most durable and reliable…