Program Manager, Engineering

Haydon Kerk Pittman, an AMETEK business, provides precision motion-control solutions for medical, laboratory automation, semiconductor, industrial automation, and other advanced technology markets. HKP’s product portfolio includes linear actuators, lead screw and nut assemblies, brushed and brushless DC motors, stepper motor-based actuators, linear rail systems, gearboxes, drives, encoders, brakes, sealed switches, and customized motion systems.

We are seeking an Engineering Program Manager to support global execution of new product introduction and custom engineering programs across multiple HKP brands, product families, and engineering locations.

This individual contributor role provides portfolio-level visibility, resource planning support, stage-gate governance, and cross-functional coordination for engineering development activities. The Engineering Program Manager owns the operating cadence, tools, reporting, metrics, and escalation processes needed to improve on-time delivery, engineering quality, launch readiness, and responsiveness to customer and operations priorities.

HKP uses a project engineer model for detailed technical execution. This role improves portfolio visibility, prioritization, governance, and escalation without replacing project-level ownership.

Success requires influence-based leadership, strong organizational discipline, technical curiosity, and the ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced environment with multiple concurrent programs.

What you will do:

Engineering Portfolio, Resource Planning & Reporting

- Maintain top-level visibility to active NPI and custom engineering programs across HKP’s global engineering organization.

- Support resource planning by identifying project load, capacity constraints, timing conflicts, skill needs, and priority tradeoffs.

- Coordinate quarterly and near-term planning activities to align engineering work with business, customer, and operational priorities.

- Establish a practical program review cadence to track milestones, risks, decisions, resources, and escalations.

- Establish practical execution metrics for schedule adherence, gate completion, resource constraints, risk closure, escalation aging, and launch readiness.

- Provide leadership with clear reporting on engineering commitments, bottlenecks, delayed decisions, and support required.

Stage-Gate Governance & Program Execution

- Facilitate stage-gate execution for strategic NPI platform programs and complex custom engineering programs.

- Own program charters, including scope, objectives, assumptions, milestones, stakeholders, risks, and success criteria.

- Prepare and facilitate gate reviews, ensuring entry and exit criteria, risks, decisions, and follow-up actions are clearly documented.

- Maintain program-level risk, issue, action, and decision logs.

- Track cross-functional readiness for major milestones, including technical, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, documentation, and launch readiness.

- Escalate risks, resource conflicts, scope changes, or decision gaps that may impact timing, quality, cost, or customer commitments.

Cross-Functional Coordination & Continuous Improvement

- Coordinate internal resources across Engineering, Product Management, Applications Engineering, Sales, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Manufacturing Engineering, and Customer Service.

- Support fast, responsive internal coordination when customer or operations escalations require reprioritization, resource alignment, or leadership visibility.

- Partner with Product Management to keep NPI and platform programs aligned with roadmap priorities, business cases, and portfolio needs.

- Partner with Applications Engineering and Sales to understand customer-related timing and escalation priorities while those functions retain primary customer-facing ownership.

- Standardize how milestones, risks, decisions, action items, gate status, resource needs, and escalation items are captured and communicated.

- Demonstrated ability and willingness to use AI tools to improve productivity, decision-making, work quality, and to reduce costs. The successful candidate must be able to identify appropriate AI use cases and critically evaluate AI-generated outputs.

- Drive continuous improvement in HKP’s engineering execution system to improve quality, speed, responsiveness, and cross-functional alignment.

What we are looking for:

- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, Operations, Project Management, or a related field.

- 5+ years of experience in program management, project management, engineering project leadership, product development, operations, or a related technical business role.

- Experience supporting cross-functional programs in a manufacturing, industrial technology, electromechanical, automation, medical device, aerospace, or similarly technical environment.

- Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams in a matrixed organization without direct authority.

- Strong understanding and evidence of program management fundamentals, including scope, schedule, milestones, risks, issues, decisions, actions, and stakeholder communication.

- Strong communication, facilitation, organization, analytical, and leadership reporting skills.

- Ability to operate with urgency and discipline in a fast-paced environment, especially when customer or operations escalations require rapid internal alignment.

- Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, Teams, SharePoint, etc.) and project management tools such as Planner Premium, MS Project, Smartsheet, Jira, or similar.

- Ability to work effectively with global teams across multiple locations and time zones.

- Ability to travel domestically and internationally as required (10%).

Preferred Qualifications:

- Engineering degree, MBA, PMP certification, Agile training, or formal program/project management training.

- Experience with motion control, linear actuators, stepper motors, DC motors, lead screw assemblies, precision components, or electromechanical systems.

- Experience supporting new product introduction, engineer-to-order, platform development, prototype development, validation, or production launch programs.

- Familiarity with stage-gate, phase-gate, APQP, design control, ECO/ECR workflows, risk management, validation, or production readiness processes.

- Experience improving project management systems, dashboards, workflows, templates, or operating cadence across a technical organization.