Engineering Leader

FPC Franchise; Michigan; Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

401(k) with match

Relocation assistance

Job summary

FPC Franchise is seeking an Engineering Leader in eastern Michigan, about an hour north of Metro Detroit. You will report to the VP of Engineering and begin with a small team or a couple of engineers, then expand to lead product, process, tooling, equipment, and controls.

This plant role requires hands-on problem solving, direct coaching, and a mindset to own and grow beyond the title. Hybrid days exist when work allows; remote-first is not this job.

Job description

Engineering Leader

This is a plant job with a wide scope. It is not a corporate engineering director seat, and it is not a specialist role where you inherit one box and optimize it.

You will work in eastern Michigan (about an hour north of Metro Detroit). We need you in the building most of the week. Hybrid days exist when the work allows. Remote-first is not this job.

You report to the VP of Engineering. Depending on who you are, you may start with a couple of engineers or a small team. Over time the job is to lead product, process, tooling, equipment, and controls — not all of it on day one. We would rather hire someone who can think and own than someone who has held the title for ten years and stopped growing.

What you will actually do

• Make the engineering system faster and less heroic: priorities, launches, problem solving, decisions.
• Improve how we make parts — quality, capacity, cost, capability. That includes unglamorous work on machines, process, and the physics of the product.
• Develop engineers. High bar, direct coaching, no theater.
• Sit in the middle of manufacturing, quality, commercial, and suppliers. Engineering here is supposed to help decide where the business goes, not write reports about what operations already decided.

Who this is for

An engineering leader with roughly 8–12 years, some of it leading projects or people, who has lived in a plant that designs and makes things — springs, wire, stampings, formed metal, precision parts, or equipment built in-house. You do not have to have run this exact product. You do have to get from “the line is down / the load is off” to geometry, tooling, measurement, and a tradeoff without a slide.

You have been in a company small enough that problems were not pre-chewed for you. Big-OEM careers only work here if you can prove you still get your hands in the process.

You are looking for more scope and a higher standard, not a softer landing or a title bump.

Who should not apply

• You need a finished org chart, a large staff, and a playbook on day one.
• You interview by narrating programs and go quiet when the problem is still messy.
• You want the job more than the work.

What we offer

Competitive base and bonus for a company our size, healthcare, 401(k) with match. Relocation help is real and not gold-plated: move your household and reasonable temporary living if you are coming from elsewhere in the Midwest.