Engineering Manager - Design for Reliability

About the Role

We're establishing and scaling our Design for Reliability (DfR) capability, and we're looking for an engineering leader to lead that growth from the front. You'll grow and mentor a regional team, shape how reliability is engineered into our products, and pioneer the use of AI and data analytics to make validation faster, smarter, and more predictive. Operating across divisions, you'll be the regional face of reliability, building credibility with our business partners and confidence with our global customers.

A central part of the mission: standardizing how we validate products at the industry level (starting with Automotive), working directly with customers to align on expectations and test strategies. If you want real scope, visible impact, and the chance to define a function rather than inherit one, this is it.

Key Responsibilities

·Own the regional reliability strategy and validation process across the product lifecycle, embedding DfR early to drive reliability by design rather than test-and-fix, keeping efforts risk-based and focused on relevant failure modes rather than following a testing checklist.

·Build, mentor, and lead a regional team of DfR engineers across multiple sites and divisions, establishing consistent methods, tools, and competency standards.

·Standardize validation approaches at the product-industry level (e.g., Automotive) for consistency in methods, coverage, and acceptance criteria across programs and customers.

·Drive reliability methodologies (physics-of-failure, accelerated life testing, design margin analysis, FMEA/DFMEA, statistical modeling) and drive root-cause analysis and corrective action.

·Lead the adoption of AI and data analytics by capturing, structuring, and analyzing reliability data across labs and programs to advance reliability prediction, optimize testing, accelerate validation, and enable continuous learning.

·Partner with divisional engineering, quality, and program leadership to integrate DfR into design and program milestones, acting as the regional voice of reliability and engage customers to align on reliability expectations, acceptance criteria, and test strategies, balancing technical rigor with time-to-market.

·Partner with the reliability test labs to execute test programs, accelerated life, environmental and mechanical stress, and failure analysis feeding lab data back into design decisions and closing capability gaps.

·Integrate manufacturing process capability, supplier and component qualification, and field reliability learning into validation strategy and design decisions, and support critical business decisions and reliability risk at product launch, manufacturing quality spills, and potential warranty/field issues.

Qualifications

Required

·Bachelor's or Master's in Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, Materials, or related).

·8+ years in reliability, validation, or design engineering, including 3+ years in a leadership or people-management role.

·Expertise in DfR methodologies, reliability validation, and accelerated/life testing, with hands-on experience planning and executing programs with reliability or test labs.

·Proven experience engaging and negotiating with customers on test and validation strategy.

·Demonstrated ability to work across and influence design, manufacturing, quality, supplier, and lab organizations in a matrixed global environment, including leading cross-functional risk reviews and informing product and launch decisions based on reliability evidence.

·Strong communication skills in English (written and spoken), including the ability to present technical reliability risk to customers and senior leadership.

Preferred

·Strong working knowledge of reliability statistics (life data analysis, confidence methods, test planning), with experience using field, warranty, and test data to drive design and corrective actions.

·Experience in automotive or other highly regulated industries including familiarity with electronics and interconnect standards (e.g., USCAR, MIL, AEC-Q, ISO/TS) and supporting customer audits, issue resolution, and qualification negotiations.

·Exposure to AI, machine learning, and data analytics including digital test data systems, dashboarding, and analytics tools applied to reliability or engineering problems.

·Experience with FRACAS, warranty analytics, and closed-loop corrective action systems.

·Experience with supplier or component qualification and manufacturing process reliability.

·Track record standardizing engineering processes across a region or enterprise and operating across divisions, sites, or business units.

·Reliability certification (e.g., CRE) a plus.

Key Competencies

Strategic capability building and team development; cross-functional influence and customer negotiation; data-driven, analytical thinking; and comfort operating with ambiguity in a matrixed, multi-site environment.