Product Manager - New Product Development

Product Manager

New Product Development  |  Peoria, IL (In-Person)  |  Full-Time  |  10–20% Travel  |  Relocation Assistance Provided

Base Salary: $105,000 – $145,000

Variable Compensation: Eligible for Rheo's Product Manager KPI scorecard and bonus plan, tied to the condition and performance of your assigned product families

Every quote Rheo sends and every spec sheet a customer trusts starts with the person who owns the product record. If that level of ownership appeals to you, keep reading.

Rheo builds the powder handling, containment, and single-use equipment that pharmaceutical, biotech, and industrial manufacturers rely on. The portfolio spans roughly eight product groups and thirty product families, and is growing.

We're looking for a Product Manager to be the commercial owner of a set of those product families: holding the data the company quotes from, answering the questions the field asks, and building the picture of where your products win and where they fall short.

What You’ll Do

• Own an assigned set of product families, accountable for their maturity, competitiveness, documentation, and commercial readiness to be sold
• Drive every assigned product family to the maturity standard: current pricing, a released BOM, validated design documentation, accurate collateral, and correct SharePoint and Epicor records
• Author the roadmap sections covering assigned product families (improvement, new-opportunity, and lifecycle recommendations)
• Recommend product extensions, standardization opportunities, and retirement candidates, each with a business case behind it
• Own the sellable-product data of record in Epicor for assigned product families (MSRP, standard lead time, and stock levels)
• Own the estimating methodology as published and applied; CEM and Sales execute estimating within it
• Analyze pricing and margin performance for your products and bring the Product Director evidence-backed recommendations on where price and margin should move
• Own the currency of the Products SharePoint pages and product collateral for assigned product families, supplying Marketing the technical substance and product claims behind them
• Gather and structure customer, field, and Service input into product requirements, maintaining the requirements record that roadmap and NPD decisions are made against
• Own the competitive record for assigned product families: a current comparison of competitor products, configurations, pricing posture, lead times, and claims the organization can quote from with confidence
• Run win/loss review with CEM and Sales, carrying the findings into the improvement slate and the roadmap
• Serve as first-line triage for inbound product questions from Sales, Inside Sales, CEM, and Operations, owning the intake, response commitment, and escalation route
• Build and run the product training cadence: a published calendar, sessions delivered to Sales, CEM, PMO, Service, and Operations, refreshed whenever products change or launch
• Create and maintain training material (overview decks, application guides, FAQ documents, demonstration protocols) for internal enablement and market-facing education
• Act as the change manager for your products: when a released product changes, you're why the rest of the company finds out in time
• Lead new product development initiatives inside your own product families, from opportunity and business case through design, validation, and launch, running the project while Design Engineers do the design work
• Own launch execution on those initiatives and any new product entering your product families (pricing loaded, BOMs released, marketing ready, systems complete, the sales team enabled), then track performance against the approved case
• Draft business cases for opportunities in your product families and take them to review as the person who will run the project if approved
• Own Continuous Product Improvement intake for assigned product families: customer-care patterns, win/loss, margin erosion, manufacturing feedback, and field failures

What Success Looks Like

• The organization quotes from Rheo's product data with confidence, because it is right, and when it is wrong, this role found it first
• Sales, CEM, and Operations know where to take a product question and get a useful answer quickly, and increasingly get it from this role rather than through it
• Product changes reach everyone who needs to know, in time, with documentation and training refreshed behind them
• The assigned product families move measurably up the maturity curve each quarter
• The company has a current, usable picture of what the assigned products compete against and why deals are won and lost, and it visibly shapes what gets built and improved

What We’re Looking For

Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Manufacturing, or Industrial Engineering, Business, or a related field
• Three or more years in product management, product marketing, technical sales support, applications engineering, or another product-facing role in a manufacturing environment
• Demonstrated ownership of product data, documentation, or configuration records in an ERP or PLM system, at a scale where accuracy mattered to someone other than the person maintaining it
• Experience translating customer, field, or sales input into product requirements or documented improvement actions
• Experience delivering technical product training or enablement to internal or customer audiences
• Experience working across engineering, sales, and operations without direct authority over any of them

Software

• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, including building and maintaining analysis in Excel
• Working familiarity with an ERP system (Epicor Kinetic preferred) covering pricing, part records, and BOM structures
• Proficiency with SharePoint as a content platform
• Enough 3D CAD and PDM familiarity (Autodesk Inventor and Vault preferred) to open, read, and interpret product models, drawings, and part records

Traits

• Extreme Ownership: takes full accountability for the condition of the assigned products, including the parts nobody asked about
• Bias for Accuracy: treats a wrong price or a stale spec sheet as a defect, not a nuisance, and is uncomfortable until it is fixed
• Customer Curiosity: wants to know why the customer asked, not just what they asked for
• Commercial Instinct: understands the intersection of price, cost, margin, and positioning, and is growing toward owning it
• Organized Under Volume: holds a full set of assigned product families, a training calendar, a change queue, and an inbound triage line without dropping any of them

Values Alignment

• Initiative: instinct for taking action to improve, solve, and deliver.
• Collaboration: proactive communication with your stakeholders.
• Competence: ability to do your job well.
• Reliability: persistent follow-through on commitments.
• Bold Humility: courage to speak, act, and listen without arrogance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment, powder handling systems, or containment technology
• Single-use technology or consumable product lines
• GMP or otherwise regulated manufacturing, including change control and customer qualification
• A stage-gate or comparable structured new product development process
• Competitive analysis, pricing analysis, or win/loss review

Why Rheo

• Privately owned and operated for 30 years and counting
• A smaller team (roughly 100 people) with a strong, in-person work culture
• Vertically integrated: see the products you manage built in the same building
• Equipment that contributes directly to pharmaceutical manufacturing
• Ownership visibility from concept through production
• A growing company in a stable, regulated industry where precision and accuracy matter
• Excellent benefits (see section below)

Benefits

• Leading medical insurance — consistently low rates compared to other businesses in the area
• Health Savings Account with employer contributions (plan-dependent)
• Dental, vision, and life insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability
• Identity theft insurance
• 401(k) with 4% employer match
• Generous PTO
• Paid paternity and maternity leave
• Paid cell phone plan with stipend for a new phone every 2 years
• Employee referral program

Working Conditions

This is a primarily on-site role based at our Peoria, IL facility, with regular time on the manufacturing floor and periodic travel (10–20%) to customer plant sites. Much of the work is desk-based, working with data and systems, and you should be able to lift up to 15 pounds and move throughout the facility and customer sites as needed. On-site visits may require personal protective equipment, including cleanroom gowning in single-use-technology environments.

Rheo Engineering is an equal opportunity employer.