Lead, Project Engineer

Company Overview

Bridgestone Americas, Inc. (BSAM), headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, and Bridgestone Europe, Middle East and Africa (BSEMEA), headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, operate collectively as a “Bridgestone West” strategic region. This region services the strategic business needs of teams across the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa. BSAM and BSEMEA are subsidiaries of Bridgestone Corporation, globally headquartered in Japan. Bridgestone and its subsidiaries develop, manufacture and market a wide range of Bridgestone, Firestone and associate brand products and solutions to address the needs of a broad range of customers and industries.

Engineering & Science

The Lead Project Engineer position will lead the definition, design, execution, and closeout of capital and continuous-improvement projects at the Oxford, NC manufacturing plant. This role owns multiple concurrent projects from concept through commissioning, ensuring solutions are safe, technically sound, cost-effective, maintainable, and aligned with plant production, quality, environmental, and business objectives. The position serves as a technical leader and cross-functional project owner, partnering with Operations, Maintenance, EHS, Quality, Procurement, Finance, suppliers, contractors, and plant leadership to deliver measurable results with minimal disruption to manufacturing operations.

• Lead a portfolio of complex capital, reliability, automation, capacity, quality, and cost-reduction projects; establish priorities, scope, schedules, budgets, risks, and resource plans.
• Develop front-end project definition, including business cases, alternatives analysis, feasibility assessments, equipment concepts, process requirements, preliminary layouts, cost estimates, and return-on-investment support.
• Apply expertise to specify, design, evaluate, and integrate manufacturing equipment, utilities, material-handling systems, tooling, guarding, piping, structural modifications, and related plant infrastructure.
• Prepare and review engineering drawings, scopes of work, bid packages, technical specifications, installation plans, commissioning plans, and turnover documentation.
• Manage project controls, including schedule, cost, forecast, change control, risk register, action tracking, contractor performance, and regular stakeholder reporting.
• Coordinate equipment procurement and contractor activities; lead technical bid evaluations, support vendor selection, negotiate technical requirements, and verify deliverables against scope and standards.
• Plan and execute installations in coordination with production and maintenance, including outage planning, lockout/tagout coordination, site readiness, startup support, and safe handoff to plant ownership.
• Lead factory/site acceptance activities, commissioning, qualification, and performance verification; confirm that projects meet safety, quality, throughput, reliability, maintainability, and financial objectives.
• Identify, prioritize, and lead continuous-improvement and automation opportunities using root-cause analysis, data, Lean principles, and structured problem-solving methods.
• Partner with Operations, Maintenance, Quality, EHS, and Technical teams to eliminate chronic losses, improve OEE, reduce scrap and downtime, increase capacity, and improve ergonomics and process stability.
• Ensure projects comply with applicable safety, environmental, quality, engineering, and plant standards; incorporate machine safety, energy isolation, ergonomics, and maintainability into designs.
• Develop technical standards and best practices for project execution, equipment design, documentation, spare parts, preventive maintenance, and contractor work.
• Communicate project status, decisions, risks, and recovery plans to plant leadership and other stakeholders; escalations promptly when scope, cost, schedule, safety, or production commitments are at risk.
• Candidates should be prepared to work during weekends or holidays as needed to support plant shutdown activities or project installations

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a closely related engineering discipline.
• Eight or more years of progressive engineering experience, including responsibility for capital projects in a manufacturing, industrial, process, or high-volume production environment.
• Demonstrated success leading multiple concurrent projects through scope development, design,…