Sr. Manager Application Engineering
Employer not yet confirmed · Cluj Napoca, Romania
Role purpose
The Manager, Application Engineering leads an application engineering team at one of the Power engineering hubs. The role is accountable for the throughput and quality of product selection, Compliance Deviation Exception (CDE) handling and quotation work, and for the reuse discipline that lets engineering capacity grow faster than headcount. As the BU scale, the team must support a multi-fold increase in engineering demand without a proportional increase in people — that is the central problem this role exists to solve.
Role scope
Hub-based leadership of an application engineering team of 10-15 application engineers, with direct line management responsibility. The model is local managers at the engineering hubs rather than a manager per region. Active hubs are Bologna, Ireland and Ras Al Khaimah and Cluj. The product-line scope (Critical Power Systems or Power Distribution & Integration) is defined per hub.
Key accountabilities
People and team leadership
- Lead, develop and resource the application engineering team at the hub; recruit, onboard and retain, and own the performance and development conversations for the team.
- Build capability through structured academy training, a competency matrix, coaching and stretch assignments on complex projects — and run a visible career-level progression with transparent promotion criteria in the application engineers team or adjacent functions.
- Balance workload and prioritization across opportunities and make the escalation calls when capacity is short.
Throughput and quality
- Own Application Engineering coverage for selected product lines within either Critical Power Systems (UPS, batteries, AI loads, grid) or Power Distribution & Integration (MV, LV, busway). MV switchgear Application Engineers report to the Manager, Pre-Sales Engineering.
- Own throughput and quality of product selection, CDE creation and quotations, against the demand the region places on the team.
- Ensure the team acts as product subject-matter experts: configurations are validated as workable before they reach a customer, and long-lead-time items are flagged early enough for production to act.
- Convert lessons learned, technical decisions and specialist knowledge into reusable standards, training and engineering assets.
Standardisation, reuse and digital engineering
- Build scalable operating mechanisms through clear spans of control, specialist pools, cross-regional resource allocation, standardization, automation and digital engineering, ensuring increased business volume and solution complexity do not automatically translate into additional management layers or engineering bottlenecks.
- Drive standardization and reuse: contribution to the engineering library of validated building blocks, reference architecture and design rules, so that solutions are configured rather than redesigned from scratch. Enforce deviation discipline: every project review asks whether a standard block already exists, and a custom route requires justification.
- Drive adoption of CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote), configurators, engineering automation and AI-enabled engineering tools within the team, using CPQ as the gate that keeps standard work standard. Identify repetitive or high-effort activities suitable for digital enablement and ensure Application Engineering contributes validated technical knowledge and data to digital engineering initiatives.
Cross-functional interfaces
- Establish clear operating interfaces with Technical Sales, Pre-Sales and ETO (Engineer-to-Order), ensuring Application Engineering is engaged early enough and that validated technical requirements are effectively transferred into detailed Pre-Sales deliverables such as SLDs (single-line diagrams), layouts, BOMs (bills of materials), submittals and technical documentation, and resolving recurring hand-off friction.
- Work with the Sales Support Unit (SSU) and Bid team so that routine work leaves the engineering queue and engineers spend their time where it adds value.
Working model and level expectations
Customer engagement
Mainly internal; occasional customer and consultant contact alongside the team.
Travel expectation
Low to moderate; travel between hubs, to customers and for training.
Typical work
Team leadership, workload balancing, quality and throughput, library and reuse discipline, capability building.
Decision profile
Owns resourcing and prioritisation at the hub; escalates structural matters.
Leadership expectation
People leadership: recruitment, development, performance and retention.
Role differentiators
- Accountable for the output of a hub, not for individual projects.
- Leads people; technical authority sits with the Principal Application Engineers — the manager owns the validation process and the quality of the team’s output.
- Owns throughput and standardisation, which is how the team scales without scaling headcount.
Qualifications and experience
Essential
- Bachelor's degree in engineering or equivalent practical experience.
- Minimum 8 years in application engineering or a related technical discipline, with experience leading or coordinating others including at least 2–3 years of direct people management.
- Strong knowledge of at least one area of the Power portfolio — UPS and large power converters, power distribution, LV and MV switchgear, busway, energy storage, DC power and power skids.
- Experience improving process, standardisation or tooling in a technical team, and scaling throughput without proportional headcount growth.
- Strong English; local language capability as required by the hub.
- Experience managing differentiated workloads across account types (global strategic accounts, regional strategic accounts, partners), with dynamic prioritization capability.
Preferred
- Hands-on experience with CPQ tools, product configurators or engineering automation.
- Experience with data centre or other mission-critical applications.
Core competencies
People leadership
Throughput and quality management
Standardization and reuse
Prioritisation under load
Capability building
Process improvement
Cross-functional collaboration
Change leadership
Digital and tool adoption
Resilience under ambiguity
Indicative success measures
Productivity
- Engineering throughput per head — opportunity volume supported per engineer — tracking the scale-without-linear-headcount mandate.
- Average cycle time from request to delivery of selection / quotation.
- Due-date and SLA adherence on selections, CDE forms and quotations against regional demand.
Quality and standardization
- Reuse rate, first-time-right and contribution to the engineering library; engineering change order (ECO) rate reducing year on year and trending to zero.
- Standard vs. custom ratio — percentage of solutions configured vs. engineered from scratch.
- Digital tool adoption rate (CPQ, configurators, AI-enabled engineering tools).
People and stakeholders
- Team capability, engagement and retention, with a clear career progression.
- Clean interfaces with Technical Sales, Pre-Sales, ETO and the Sales Support Unit.
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