Ride Development Engineer

ZF Group; Northville (MI); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual Incentive Plan

Paid Vacation

Personal Time

401k Plan

Health Care Benefits

Paid Holidays

Community outreach activities

Job summary

ZF Group in Northville is seeking a Ride Development Engineer in a hybrid role, with consideration for an Engineer II or Senior Engineer based on experience. The role focuses on coordinating ride tuning activities, interacting with customers, and guiding technicians through damper and valve development tasks.

You will apply knowledge of vehicle dynamics, damper testing, and ZF adaptive valve technology to optimize ride performance, while maintaining thorough documentation and producing

Qualifications

• B.S. in Mechanical Engineering or Mechatronics Engineering.
• Strong experience with vehicle ride dynamics.
• Proven ability to train others and lead teams.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate ride work with customers, manage tuning requests and tools for tuning.
• Build professional relationships with customers and convey product knowledge.
• Adjust hydraulic valve codes to meet ride/handling targets.
• Lead and support technicians during ride work at customer sites and mentor junior engineers.
• Assist in implementing component changes to achieve tuning goals.
• Maintain change logs and evaluation notes for each program.
• Complete pre- and post-tuning activities including Engineering Reports and customer sign-off, and communicate outcomes to the project team.
• Release hydraulic settings for production, including valve BOMs and final codes, and prepare related documents.
• Analyze hydraulic function tests and prepare test reports for DV/PV testing.

Skills

Vehicle dynamics

Damper development

Damper testing

Adaptive valve technology

Mentoring / training

Organizational skills

Self-motivation

Problem solving

Education

B.S. in Mechanical Engineering or Mechatronics Engineering

Job description

About the team:The team is looking for a new member to join them in Northville, in a hybrid role. This person could be hired as an Engineer II or Senior Engineer, based on skillset and experience.

What you can look forward to as a Ride Development Engineer:

• Responsible for coordinating ride work activities with customer, submitting ride work requests through Engineering Resource Manager, and coordinating all needed tools and components needed for tuning.
• Develop strong working relationships with customers conveying both professionalism and strong product knowledge.
• Determines required adjustments to hydraulic valve codes to achieve ride and handling targets established by the customer.
• Directs the efforts of support technicians when conducting ride work at customer locations and supports less-experienced ride engineers as needed.
• Assists the support technician in making the component changes required to achieve desired results.
• Maintains accurate change logs and evaluation notes during every step of the tuning process using the correct terminology. Organize information systematically and separately for each program.
• Completes pre- and post- tuning activities including issuing R01 (Engineering Report) after each ride tuning session, obtaining Customer sign off and effectively communicating customer expectations and tuning outcomes to project team.
• Releases hydraulic settings for production including creating valve BOMs and preparing the necessary documents for final valve codes, forces, and tolerances.
• Responsible for hydraulic function test results as part of the customer DV/PV testing including analyzing results, reviewing test specimens, and preparing test reports based on those results.

Your profile as a Ride Development Engineer:

• B.S. in Mechanical Engineering or Mechatronics Engineering.
• 8+ years of experience with strong functional/product knowledge, and ability to train others (internship/co-op included).
• Possesses good working knowledge of vehicle dynamics fundamentals for application to damper development.
• Ability to evaluate vehicle ride characteristics and associate them with product specific component changes.
• Understands function of latest ZF adaptive valve technology and is adept at execution of all types of ZF adaptive valve settings.
• Exhibits superior knowledge and execution of damper / ride development processes, both ZF internal processes and customer processes.
• Demonstrates proven skills in damper characterization and testing including damper industrialization and serial production support.
• Good organizational skills and self- motivated.

Why you should choose ZF :

• A supportive collaborative team environment
• Annual Incentive Plan
• Paid Vacation
• Personal Time
• 401k Plan
• Health Care Benefits
• Paid Holidays
• Supportive Employee Groups and community outreach activities