Automation Engineering Director

Who We Are

Founded in 1964, Tech Etch specializes in manufacturing precision-engineered components and flexible printed circuits in the Aerospace and Defense, Medical Devices, and Electronics and Telecommunications industries. Our mission is to inspire, create, and provide innovative solutions that enhance lives globally. We develop meaningful, long-term partnerships between our employee-owners and the industry leaders we serve. Our employees make up a united team of individuals who value positivity, teamwork, and growth with a mission to advance their skillsets and success.

Tech Etch operates facilities in Plymouth, MA, Fall River, MA, and Litchfield, MN.

DIRECTOR OF MANUFACTURING AUTOMATION

We are seeking a strategic and hands-on Director of Manufacturing Automation to lead Tech Etch’s automation roadmap and project portfolio. This role identifies and delivers automation solutions that expand capacity, reduce labor requirements, improve quality and throughput, and support new business opportunities. The Director partners across Operations, OpEx, Engineering, Quality, Finance, IT, Sales, and external suppliers to ensure investments produce measurable, sustainable results.

SHIFT:
Full-time, Monday-Friday, standard business hours with flexibility to support installations, startups, and travel between facilities.

• Develop and maintain a multiyear manufacturing automation strategy, standards, and prioritized project roadmap aligned with business goals.
• Identify and evaluate opportunities involving robotics, controls, machine vision, automated inspection, material handling, data collection, and related technologies.
• Develop automation strategies for new products and new customer programs that improve competitiveness, support capacity growth, and reduce long-term operating costs.
• Build business cases and capital requests that define cost, return, capacity, labor, quality, revenue, risk, and payback expectations.
• Lead projects from concept and design through fabrication, programming, installation, validation, training, commissioning, and production handoff.
• Manage project scope, schedule, budget, resources, technical risk, vendor performance, and realized business benefits; escal or correct issues when results are at risk.
• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary team and coordinate internal employees, integrators, external partners, equipment builders, contractors, and suppliers.
• Partner with production employees and cross-functional leaders to define requirements, support adoption, and ensure effective training, documentation, maintenance, and sustainment.
• Ensure systems meet safety, quality, regulatory, cybersecurity, reliability, maintainability, and change-control requirements.
• Track portfolio performance and implemented-system results, incorporate lessons learned, and scale successful solutions across products, processes, and locations.
• Partner with the Operational Excellence team to identify and eliminate upstream process variation through the application of Lean and Six Sigma methodologies, ensuring manufacturing processes are stable, capable, and standardized in support of automation solutions that operate reliably without continuous human intervention.

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, automation, robotics, mechatronics, or a related engineering discipline.
• Progressive leadership experience in manufacturing automation, capital equipment, or manufacturing technology, including projects delivered from concept through production.
• Demonstrated ability to develop financial justifications, manage budgets and schedules, and lead multidisciplinary teams and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Working knowledge of manufacturing operations, equipment integration, process improvement, production support, and industrial safety and quality requirements.
• Strong business judgment, technical decision-making, project leadership, communication, coaching, and structured problem-solving skills.
• Experience with robotics, PLCs, controls, machine vision, automated inspection, motion control, sensors, material handling, or manufacturing data integration…