Applications Engineering Manager

Summary: The Applications Engineering Manager leads Applications Engineering to deliver accurate, timely, and commercially sound technical solutions. The role translates customer requirements into properly sized and configured products and systems, strengthens customer technical confidence, and supports revenue conversion while protecting product boundaries, execution quality, and gross margin. The supervisor creates a predictable operating system through clear priorities, visible capacity, disciplined processes, delegation, technical standards, and accountability. The role also leads the post-shipment customer technical-resolution function, connecting field performance issues to timely containment, root-cause learning, and product and process improvement. The role is accountable for laboratory governance and ensures responsibilities are clearly delegated so the lab operates as a safe, organized, disciplined, and strategically aligned engineering and customer-engagement asset.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities: Team Leadership and Performance Management Lead, coach, and develop Applications Engineers; set clear expectations for performance, behavior, technical growth, and customer service. Establish visible priorities and workload plans; assess capacity, assign ownership, balance resources, and escalate conflicts early when commitments are at risk. Delegate work at the appropriate level, avoid unnecessary concentration of knowledge or decisions, and build backup coverage for critical products and processes. Conduct consistent one-on-one meetings, provide timely feedback, maintain development plans, and hold team members accountable for commitments and results. Support recruiting, selection, onboarding, training, succession planning, and performance management for the Applications Engineering team. Application Engineering and Technical Governance Own the technical sizing, selection, configuration, and application of Hydro-Thermal products and systems, including supporting calculations, assumptions, documentation, and traceability. Establish and maintain standardized calculation methods, design/application guidelines, product boundaries, review requirements, and escalation criteria. Serve as the technical escalation point for complex or high-risk applications while developing the team's ability to resolve issues independently. Ensure proposed solutions meet customer requirements, applicable engineering standards, product capabilities, safety expectations, and internal quality requirements. Partner with Product Development, Project Engineering, Controls, Operations, Quality, Service, and Sales to resolve application risks and improve product and process knowledge.

Commercial and Customer Support: Lead the technical portion of the quote-development process, ensuring complete requirements, accurate sizing and configuration, clear scope, documented exceptions, and clean handoff to execution teams. Support Sales and customers through technical discovery, solution development, presentations, trials, and troubleshooting, with appropriate responsiveness and commercial awareness. Provide technically grounded input to costing and pricing recommendations; identify margin, scope, and execution risks and escalate exceptions according to established authority levels. Review lost opportunities, recurring technical objections, and quote friction with Sales and Business Development; translate insights into improvements in tools, products, training, and processes that increase quote-to-order conversion. Ensure lessons learned from field trials, startup, and troubleshooting are documented and incorporated into application standards and team training. Process, Systems, and Knowledge Ownership Own and continuously improve the Applications Engineering workflow from request intake and prioritization through sizing, technical validation, quotation support, and execution handoff. Own the business rules, product logic, documentation, user acceptance, training, and sustainable maintenance process for CPQ and related application-engineering tools; coordinate software administration or development support as needed. Maintain controlled, accessible documentation including calculation tools, configuration rules, application guides, templates, decision records, troubleshooting procedures, and product knowledge. Reduce single-point dependencies by establishing product-line subject-matter ownership, cross-training, change control, and backup coverage. Use root-cause analysis and corrective action to reduce recurring errors, rework, delays, and avoidable escalations. Planning, Reporting, and Cross-Functional Accountability Define service levels, operating metrics, and a regular team dashboard; review performance and lead corrective actions when results fall short. Provide clear status, forecast, constraints, and risks to the Director of Engineering and affected stakeholders; close communication loops on assigned actions and commitments. Coordinate Applications Engineering priorities with Sales demand, strategic initiatives, product launches, project schedules, and available technical capacity. Plan departmental resource, training, software, and tooling needs and contribute to annual budgeting and forecasting. Promote disciplined continuous improvement, customer focus, quality, collaboration, and compliance with company policies and the Quality Management System. Customer Technical Support and Resolution Governance Lead the post-shipment customer technical-resolution function and provide direct management, coaching, prioritization, development, and performance accountability for the Engineering Technician – Customer Resolution & Process Governance. Ensure the customer technical-resolution process operates predictably, with the Engineering Technician – Customer Resolution & Process Governance serving as the primary case recipient and owner. Monitor acknowledgment, assignment, documentation, escalation, customer communication, due dates, and closure performance without becoming the routine intake or triage point. Coordinate Applications Engineering participation in troubleshooting, field support, returns, service-order resolution, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and engineering changes as appropriate. Ensure CRM and ERP records, return status, technical findings, customer agreements, and closure documentation are complete, accurate, and audit-ready. Establish cross-functional resolution rules that allow the process owner to coordinate and track actions across Applications Engineering, Product Design, Controls, Field Service, Inside Sales, Quality, Accounting, and other functions while escalating stalled or high-risk actions through the appropriate functional leader. Maintain defined escalation and approval paths for significant customer, safety, quality, technical, warranty, and financial risks; preserve direct escalation access to the Director of Engineering and independent Quality participation when appropriate. Review recurring field issues and ensure lessons learned are incorporated into application standards, CPQ rules, product improvements, engineering changes, technical documentation, and team training.

Laboratory Leadership: Own overall accountability for laboratory governance and ensure responsibilities are clearly assigned within the team. Designate a Lab Leader or primary laboratory point of contact when capacity allows; otherwise, distribute responsibilities among qualified team members with clear ownership and backup coverage. Ensure safe and predictable laboratory operation through appropriate delegation of scheduling, housekeeping, resource and budget control, infrastructure readiness, test documentation, measurement controls, and compliance with established processes. Monitor laboratory priorities and performance, resolve resource conflicts, and align capacity with engineering validation, product development, Applications Engineering, and professional customer demonstrations. Ensure test requesters retain responsibility for test objectives, required samples, assigned technical work, documentation inputs, and post-test cleanup.

Qualifications and Experience: Required Bachelor's degree in mechanical, chemical, electrical, or a related engineering discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience. Five or more years of applications engineering, product engineering, technical sales support, process systems, or related industrial experience. Demonstrated experience leading people, projects, or technical work; formal supervisory experience is strongly preferred. Working knowledge of thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, process data analysis, and the application of engineered industrial equipment. Ability to interpret customer requirements and convert them into calculations, equipment selections, configurations, technical scopes, and commercially useful recommendations. Strong planning, prioritization, delegation, coaching, problem-solving, decision-making, written communication, and customer-facing communication skills. Ability to manage competing priorities and make risks, capacity constraints, decisions, and commitments visible in a fast-paced environment. Preferred Experience with direct steam injection, process heating, skid-mounted equipment, sanitary processing, controls, valves, or adjacent industrial process technologies. Understanding of PLC logic, PID loop tuning, controls integration, and troubleshooting of process systems. Experience with CPQ, ERP, CRM, product configuration, engineering change control, or rules-based sizing/configuration tools; NetSuite experience is a plus. Working knowledge of AutoCAD or comparable 2D drawing tools and the ability to interpret P&IDs, layouts, and technical drawings. Experience with continuous improvement, root-cause analysis, quality systems, and ISO 9001 environments. Advanced degree, professional engineering registration, or relevant technical/leadership certification. Experience leading customer technical support, field-issue resolution, service engineering, returns, corrective action, or a comparable post-shipment resolution process. Experience with engineering laboratories, test operations, measurement systems, or customer demonstrations. Leadership and Behavioral Competencies: Ownership: Takes responsibility for team results, process performance, decisions, and follow-through. Priority and capacity management: Translates business demand into realistic commitments, visible plans, and timely escalation. Developing others: Builds independent judgment and capability through coaching, delegation, feedback, and accountability. Technical and commercial judgment: Balances customer needs, engineering integrity, product boundaries, execution risk, conversion, and margin. Communication and collaboration: Creates clarity across Sales, Engineering, Operations, Service, and customers and consistently closes loops. Continuous improvement: Uses data, standards, and root-cause discipline to improve quality, speed, repeatability, and knowledge retention.

Travel: Approximately 20–30% travel is expected for customer visits, field support, training, conferences, and other business needs. Travel schedules may occasionally require departure on Sunday afternoon or evening and travel outside normal business hours.