Team Lead Mechanical Engineering

Job Description

How do you ensure that innovative mechanical solutions are not only technically strong, but are also successfully developed and applied in practice? As Team Lead Mechanical Engineering, you combine your technical expertise with a clear people management responsibility. You lead a team of 10 to 15 mechanical engineers and are responsible for their development, performance and deployment across different product development projects.

You conduct regular 1-on-1 meetings and performance reviews, discuss development and performance, and lead formal appraisal conversations. At the same time, you remain involved in the technical challenges within product development. You work in a project-driven matrix organization, where your engineers contribute to different projects and multidisciplinary teams. Together with project leaders and colleagues from disciplines such as software, electronics, systems engineering and testing, you set clear priorities and work towards concrete deadlines and deliverables.

In this way, you help ensure that high-quality mechanical solutions are developed to perform reliably under the demanding conditions of a dairy farm. From new concepts and prototypes to series production and improving existing products, you combine leadership with technical expertise and a strong understanding of how products are developed and manufactured.

Your main responsibilities include:

• Lead, coach and develop a team of 10 to 15 mechanical engineers, including 1-on-1 meetings, performance reviews and appraisal conversations, with a focus on performance, individual development and collaboration.
• Align the deployment and priorities of team members across different development projects, working closely with project leaders and other disciplines across the Product Development department.
• Provide direction and support in the design and development of mechanical components, subsystems and complete machines, while safeguarding technical quality, manufacturability, reliability and cost efficiency.
• Enable effective collaboration within the matrix organization, ensuring engineers can contribute successfully to project objectives, deadlines and deliverables.
• Support engineers with technical challenges, prototype development, testing and validation, and help translate findings from practice into improvements in the design.
• Contribute to the further development of technical ways of working, knowledge sharing and collaboration within the team and the wider product development organization.

Qualifications

You are an experienced mechanical engineer and people manager who enjoys both technical product development and helping people grow. You are comfortable taking responsibility for an engineering team, setting clear expectations and supporting engineers in their performance and development. At the same time, you understand what it takes to work towards deadlines and concrete deliverables within a professional project environment.

You also bring:

• A completed bachelor's or master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Industrial Design Engineering or a comparable technical field.
• Extensive experience in designing and developing mechanical products or technical systems within a complex product development environment, including experience with co-development and series production.
• Experience in people management and in leading and developing engineers, including conducting 1-on-1 meetings, performance reviews and appraisal conversations.
• Experience working within a project and matrix organization, where engineers from different disciplines collaborate towards project objectives, deadlines and deliverables.
• Good knowledge of manufacturing methods and production processes, combined with the technical understanding to assess design choices from a manufacturability perspective, for example in processes such as injection moulding and milling.
• Experience with CAD software, preferably Creo or comparable 3D design tools, and the ability to analyse technical challenges and clearly substantiate technical decisions.

Experience with or an affinity for robotics and automation is a plus. Knowledge of or experience with dairy farming can also help you quickly understand the environment in which our products are used every day.

Do you recognize yourself in the core of this role, but do not meet every single requirement? We still encourage you to apply.

Additional Information

Working at Lely means contributing to sustainable progress within one of the most innovative organizations in the Netherlands. You contribute to making the agricultural sector future-proof - and we make sure that you get all the space, resources and support you need to do so.

• An international working environment with opportunities for own initiative and entrepreneurship.
• Excellent working conditions, including up to 8 weeks of vacation per year and a good pension scheme.
• A salary within the scale of €6400 - €9000 gross per month, in which we like to see opportunities for growth from your starting salary towards the future
• Good growth opportunities: you are in control of your development and can choose from various training courses through our Lely Academy - from personal development to job-specific training.
• Our modern Lely Campus offers daily access to extensive sports facilities: an indoor gym, outdoor padel courts, an outdoor basketball and volleyball court, table tennis and table soccer. You can join Hyrox workouts or sign up for personal training - and challenge your colleagues during an active break.
• Enjoy fresh coffee and tea from our own barista, with milk straight from our farm, as well as a healthy and affordable company restaurant.
• A healthy work-life balance thanks to our hybrid work policy: you work at least three days a week on Campus, with flexible working hours and plenty of room to spend extra time on site (between 06:00 and 20:00).
• A free shuttle bus will take you to and from the metro in Maassluis, so your workday starts and ends smoothly.
• Successes need to be celebrated: from anniversaries to Christmas parties - at Lely we know how to do it!

We are also proud that our efforts and vision have been rewarded by winning the Rotterdam Entrepreneur Award 2025!

Recruitment & selection agency, consultancy, and/or secondment agency?

We appreciate the interest, but we are looking for all our candidates directly. We understand that you, as an intermediary, want to present candidates for our great positions and thus contribute to our ambitions, but this is not how we have set up our recruitment. This means that all unsolicited profiles offered on Lely vacancies will be treated as direct applications.

Salary Range: 6600 - 9400