Principal Materials Engineer - Polymers; Advanced Engineering

Job Description:

Bring deep technical authority and first-principles rigor to define, mature, and scale polymer materials and processing approaches across Milwaukee Tool’s Hand Tools business unit (Hand Tools, Storage, PPE).

As a Principal Materials Engineer, you serve as the subject matter expert in polymer systems, driving material selection, development, validation, processing, and manufacturability decisions for high-impact applications. You define material performance intent, develop validation strategies, and translate results into confident material decisions from early exploration through commercialization.

You operate with high autonomy across Advanced Engineering (R&D) and platform development, independently progressing multiple material efforts in parallel. You also lead direct technical engagement with material suppliers and development partners to solve complex material challenges.

This role emphasizes early-stage material exploration and innovation, requiring the ability to identify emerging material opportunities and generate insights before formal validation pathways exist.

• Define material performance intent tied to end-use conditions, durability, and manufacturability requirements
• Develop, qualify, and implement polymer systems (plastics, elastomers, coatings, adhesives, composites) from concept through production-ready specifications, ensuring alignment between design intent, tooling strategy, processing conditions, manufacturability, and field performance
• Define and execute platform-level material strategies, enabling consistent performance and manufacturability across product architectures
• Translate experimental and field data into material and process decisions by linking processing–structure–property relationships to end-use performance and failure modes, and by driving upfront analysis prior to tooling and trials
• Scout and evaluate emerging polymer, elastomeric, and flexible material technologies — including startup platforms, university-derived materials, and supplier development pipelines — to expand the organization’s materials and processing capability roadmap
• Design novel test methodologies where standard approachesfail tofully characterize material behavior; treat data exploration as a primary tool for surfacing material and process insights that drive early-stage decisions
• Apply materialsexpertiseacross rigid and flexible polymer systems , including elastomeric components,overmoldedinterfaces, and protective padding or soft goods applications relevant to PPE and hand tool ergonomics
• Lead direct technical engagement with global material suppliers and development partners to co-develop and mature advanced material and process solutions
• Lead root-cause investigations for complex material failures, applyingappropriate analyticaltechniques toidentifyfailure mechanisms and translate findings into design, material, or process changes ;maintainfamiliarity with relevant test methods anddemonstratewillingness to work hands-on in the lab as needed
• Drive corrective actions that prevent recurrence through changes in materialselection, design, or processing conditions
• Provide targeted support to high-impact production or field issues (~10%), focused on complex or ambiguous failures
• Influence design, manufacturing, and sourcing decisions to ensure alignment between material selection, processing, and product performance
• Apply strong working knowledge of DFM and tooling to polymer materialselection—understanding how material, processing, and design impact tooling and vice versa, and using that understanding to influence manufacturability and development decisions
• Develop sufficient fluency in injection molding simulation workflows (e.g., Moldflow, FEA, material models) to define meaningful inputs, interpret outputs, and drive targeted requests in partnership with dedicated simulation resources;
  direct simulation execution capability is preferred but not required
• Document material intent, assumptions, tradeoffs, and risks in clear specifications and recommendations
• Mentor engineers and elevate technical rigor in…