Application Development Engineer

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Job Description:

Position: Application Development Engineer (ADE)
Business Vertical: Automotive, Transportation & Energy Laboratory

Location: Pune

The Impact You’ll Make in this Role

As an Application Development Engineer, you will leverage your technical expertise and mechanical aptitude to collaborate with OEMs, Tier suppliers, and cross-functional teams. You will play a critical role in developing, testing, and validating innovative automotive applications, driving customer-inspired solutions, and enabling process automation and tooling advancements.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as the primary technical interface with OEMs and Tier suppliers for 3M automotive solutions.

• Lead application development activities, including ideation, feasibility analysis, design documentation, and validation.

• Apply tooling knowledge and hands-on experience with automotive part suppliers to deliver optimized solutions.

• Conduct field trials, in-plant application support, and internal testing to validate product performance.

• Provide application support and training to customers, sales, and marketing teams, including leveraging digital/e-tools.

• Drive Customer Inspired Innovation (CII) programs through market specialization and product expertise.

• Collaborate across functions to solve complex problems and support the commercialization of new customer solutions.

• Ensure compliance with TS16949/QMS documentation, industry regulations, and safety/health/environmental policies.

• Support prototyping, sampling, and scaling-up activities, including obtaining customer prototype and tooled-sample approvals.

• Evaluate and audit product performance against customer-specific requirements.

• Provide timely corrective action plans for customer complaints.

• Apply 3M Six-Sigma methodologies to drive continuous improvement in work practices.

Your Skills and Expertise

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or Mechatronics.

• 3–5 years of experience in technical/application engineering, customer support, or related roles in automotive or allied industries.

• Proven expertise in tooling design, manufacturing, and understanding material behavior during processing.

• Hands-on experience in design-to-build fundamentals and lab-to-field scale-up.

• Strong analytical, data-driven, and tech-savvy mindset.

• Excellent communication skills with fluency in English and comfort working in a global environment.

• Self-motivated, collaborative, and capable of working independently.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in customer-facing technical roles in OEM/Tier supplier environments.

• Exposure to prototyping, sampling, and validation processes.

• Knowledge of industry standards, regulations, and automotive quality systems (TS16949/QMS).

• Certification/experience in Six-Sigma or other continuous improvement methodologies.

Learn more about 3M’s creative solutions to the world’s problems at www.3M.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn @3M.Safety is a core value at 3M. All employees are expected to contribute to a strong Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) culture by following safety policies, identifying hazards, and engaging in continuous improvement.

Please note: your application may not be considered if you do not provide your education and work history, either by: 1) uploading a resume, or 2) entering the information into the application fields directly.

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