Engineering Manager Advanced Product

Title: Engineering Manager- Advanced Product

Location: Plainville, CT (mostly onsite)

Interview:Phone+Skype.

Role Overview

• Entry-level engineering leadership opportunity leading the Advanced Products team.
• Focused on R&D, emerging technologies, and front-end product development rather than sustaining engineering.
• Partner role to another Engineering Manager, helping lead a recently rebuilt engineering organization.
• Ideal target candidate is a Senior Engineer, Principal Engineer, or Technical Lead looking to move into management.

What They're Looking For

• Strong Electrical Engineering foundation required
• Candidates should understand product discovery, requirements development, problem solving, and early-stage technology development.
• Looking for engineers who can explain how products are developed and why technical decisions were made, rather than high-level executives or chief engineers.
• Interest in working with new technologies and innovation-focused projects.

Technical Environment

• Work is closer to the physics and sensing layer:
  • Analog design
  • Signal/function transfer principles
  • Sensor technologies
• Not a controls engineering role.

Team Structure

• Team was historically small, lean, and highly tenured.
• Timothy recently rebuilt the organization and approximately half the team is new.
• Organization is split into two major groups:
  • Product Realization
  • Advanced Products
• Team consists of:
  • Principal Engineers
  • Senior Engineers
  • Electrical Engineers
  • Mechanical Engineers
  • Test Engineers

Target Candidate Profile

• Senior Engineer, Principal Engineer, Project Lead, or Technical Lead ready for first people leadership role.
• Strong EE background with hands-on product development experience.
• Experience working on innovative product development and technology exploration.
• Comfortable leading technical teams while remaining technically involved.

Industries / Companies

Preferred or Successful Backgrounds

• Defense
• Military electronics
• Industrial technology
• Sensor and instrumentation environments
• Open to others as well if they're a strong EE

Less Successful Backgrounds

• Collins Aerospace
• Pratt & Whitney
• Startup environments
• Controls-focused engineering teams

Recruiting Challenges

• Limited applicant flow to date; no candidates have applied.
• Electrical Engineers interested in moving into management are difficult to find.
• Initial applicant pool skewed heavily mechanical, while the role requires stronger EE expertise.

Interview Process

1. 45-minute interview with Timothy Sasur
2. Talent assessment
3. Panel interview with Timothy plus two additional team members
4. Offer stage

Submission Requirements

• Include compensation expectations.
• Include availability/start date.
• Note sponsorship/visa requirements if applicable.
• Copy Jamie on all candidate submissions.
• Provide a recruiter summary highlighting leadership readiness, EE background, and R&D/product development experience.

Job description

The Engineering Manager, Advanced Products leads a multidisciplinary team of experienced electrical and mechanical engineers focused on translating customer and market opportunities into product concepts and enabling technologies. This role is well suited for an accomplished electrical engineering leader ready to expand their impact from individual technical contribution to full-time team leadership. The manager guides requirements, technology evaluation, concept development, and technical risk reduction while developing a team capable of solving increasingly complex problems with greater rigor and independence.

Essential Functions:

• Lead advanced product development from opportunity through concept design freeze, translating customer needs into technically sound, well-defined product concepts ready for Product Realization.
• Build and lead a high-performing multidisciplinary engineering team, developing Senior and Principal engineers into stronger technical owners and independent problem solvers.
• Guide sensing, electronic, and electromechanical product development, bringing strong electrical engineering judgment while leveraging specialized expertise across the team.
• Drive technical discovery and risk reduction through requirements development, architecture, analysis, experimentation, prototyping, and early validation.
• Shape technology roadmaps and product architectures by identifying capability gaps, reusable technologies, platform opportunities, and paths to develop or acquire needed capability.
• Partner with Product Management to connect customer and market opportunities with technical possibilities, feasibility, and readiness.
• Lead through technical judgment rather than individual heroics, challenging assumptions, facilitating tradeoffs, and raising engineering rigor while maintaining ownership within the team.
• Ensure strong transition to Product Realization through clear requirements, technical direction, understood risks, and mature product definitions.
• Extend technical capability through external awareness and partnerships, selectively engaging customers, suppliers, universities, and emerging technologies.

Critical Success Factors:

• Creates stronger product concepts through clearer requirements, better technical definition, disciplined learning, and earlier risk identification that improve downstream execution.
• Builds deeper technical capability throughout the team, developing strong technical owners while reducing dependency on individual experts.

Education & Experience Required:

* Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or closely related engineering discipline, with 7+ years of progressive experience developing electronic, electromechanical, sensing, instrumentation, or similarly complex products. Master's degree preferred.

• Demonstrated progression from strong individual contributor into technical or team leadership, such as Lead, Senior, Principal, Chief, Project, or supervisory responsibilities. Prior formal people-management experience is not required.
• Strong electrical engineering foundation with sufficient multidisciplinary breadth to lead experienced electrical and mechanical engineers and engage credibly in system-level technical decisions.
• Demonstrated experience developing products from early requirements and concept development through design, validation, and execution.
• Experience translating customer or market needs into requirements, evaluating technical alternatives, and maturing early ideas into credible product concepts.
• Demonstrated ability to reduce technical uncertainty through analysis, experimentation, prototyping, testing, and structured engineering problem solving.
• Experience developing others through technical leadership, mentoring, coaching, design reviews, or team leadership while enabling engineers to maintain ownership of their work.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills with experience working across Product Management and other functions involved in bringing engineered products to market.

Additional experience considered a plus:

• Experience with sensor, instrumentation, embedded electronics, measurement, or controls technologies.
• Exposure to technology roadmapping, product architecture, platform development, or external technology partnerships.
• Familiarity with electrical and mechanical engineering design environments; Altium and SolidWorks experience preferred.