Senior Mechanical Engineering Manager, Custom Automation

Steven Douglas Corp; Ohio; On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Vacation & sick leave

401(k) match

Parental leave

Employee assistance

Job summary

Steven Douglas Corp. designs, engineers, and builds custom automation machines for manufacturing challenges.

The Mechanical Engineering Manager will lead the engineering team, own department standards, and ensure technical execution aligns with customer needs and schedules. You’ll mentor engineers, drive best practices, and collaborate across projects to deliver reliable, manufacturable machinery while maintaining safety and quality standards.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or related field.
• 10+ years mechanical engineering/machine design experience.
• 5+ years leading or managing engineering professionals.
• Strong knowledge of machine design principles, components, manufacturing methods, materials, and tolerancing.
• Advanced experience with 3D CAD; SolidWorks strongly preferred.
• Experience developing and implementing engineering standards, processes, and reusable design solutions.
• Strong understanding of designing equipment for manufacturability, assembly, serviceability, reliability, and safety.
• Ability to balance technical excellence with project schedules, budgets, and customer requirements.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop mechanical engineers and designers to improve department performance.
• Increase department performance against sold labor budgets by 5% each year.
• Plan and allocate engineering resources across projects based on priorities, schedules, workload, and technical requirements.
• Set clear expectations and provide regular feedback, training, and performance reviews.
• Participate in recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding new team members.
• Build a collaborative team that communicates well, solves problems together, and takes ownership of results.
• Establish, maintain, and continuously improve SDC mechanical engineering standards and best practices.
• Drive standardization and reuse of proven machine designs, components, assemblies, and engineering solutions where appropriate.
• Maintain engineering libraries, design standards, documentation requirements, and release processes.
• Improve department processes to increase engineering quality, accuracy, consistency, and efficiency.
• Provide technical leadership and oversight for mechanical concepts and detailed machine designs.
• Work to build technical experts in various machine types to lean on for advanced technical support.
• Ensure designs meet customer specifications, SDC engineering standards, safety requirements, project schedules, and budgets.
• Guide engineers through complex machine design challenges and technical decisions.
• Review machine concepts, layouts, calculations, component selections, materials, finishes, drawings, BOMs, and release packages.
• Participate in and/or lead internal and customer design reviews.
• Support design issues through machine assembly, debug, acceptance testing, installation, and startup.
• Work closely with Project Management to coordinate engineering schedules, priorities, project progress, and resource needs.
• Collaborate with Controls Engineering, Manufacturing, Assembly, Sales, Applications Engineering, and other departments throughout the project lifecycle.
• Support concept development and quoting for new projects as needed.
• Represent Mechanical Engineering in management discussions and company-wide initiatives.

Skills

Leadership

Engineering design

Project management

Communication

Problem-solving

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

SolidWorks

3D CAD

Job description

Steven Douglas Corp. designs, engineers, and builds custom automation machines for manufacturing challenges.

The Mechanical Engineering Manager will lead the engineering team, own department standards, and ensure technical execution aligns with customer needs and schedules. You’ll mentor engineers, drive best practices, and collaborate across projects to deliver reliable, manufacturable machinery while maintaining safety and quality standards.