About This Role
Kidde Global Solutions is seeking a Staff Productivity Engineer to improve the profitability and competitiveness of Residential Fire products through disciplined cost reduction, value engineering, design simplification, and manufacturing improvement. In addition to leading complex productivity initiatives, this role provides technical leadership for the Productivity Engineering team and supports the manager in coordinating the team’s day-to-day work. The role identifies and implements changes to existing products without compromising safety, quality, reliability, regulatory compliance, supply continuity, or customer value.
The Staff Productivity Engineer partners with Product Development, Sustaining Engineering, Component Engineering, Supply Chain, Procurement, Manufacturing, Quality, Finance, and Compliance to build a robust productivity pipeline and convert approved opportunities into validated, implemented, and financially verified savings. The role also provides technical guidance to other Productivity Engineers and consolidates project progress, risks, and support needs for reporting to the manager.
Key Responsibilities
Technical Leadership and Team Coordination
Assist the manager in coordinating the Productivity Engineering team’s day-to-day technical work, priorities, and project execution.
Provide technical guidance, coaching, and complex problem-solving support to other Productivity Engineers, including design and solution reviews as needed.
Provide technical review and guidance on project scope, technical approach, risk assessment, validation strategy, and implementation readiness to promote sound and consistent engineering decisions across the team.
Monitor and consolidate the progress, milestones, savings outlook, risks, resource needs, and escalation items for all projects led by Productivity Engineers, and provide clear portfolio updates to the manager.
Coordinate cross-project dependencies and shared technical resources, and facilitate alignment among Productivity Engineers and cross-functional partners.
Act as the technical escalation point for complex productivity issues while maintaining project ownership with the responsible Productivity Engineer.
Drive consistent engineering methods, documentation standards, decision criteria, best-practice sharing, and lessons learned across the Productivity Engineering team.
Productivity Strategy and Opportunity Development
Identify, evaluate, and prioritize cost-reduction and value-engineering opportunities across existing product families and platforms.
Develop and maintain a productivity project pipeline aligned with annual operating plans and business priorities.
Use product cost, bill-of-material, manufacturing, supplier, warranty, and portfolio data to identify improvement opportunities.
Establish project scope, technical approach, resource requirements, implementation timing, expected savings, and key risks.
Value Engineering and Design Optimization
Lead value engineering activities that reduce cost while preserving required product performance, safety, reliability, and customer value.
Simplify mechanical, electrical, firmware, packaging, and manufacturing designs where technically and commercially justified.
Drive part standardization, component reuse, material optimization, and design-for-manufacturing and design-for-assembly improvements.
Challenge unnecessary complexity and recommend practical solutions that improve product and process efficiency.
Technical Evaluation and Validation
Evaluate proposed changes for impact to product requirements, system performance, reliability, safety, compliance, manufacturability, and supply continuity.
Develop risk assessments, verification plans, test requirements, and acceptance criteria for productivity-driven changes.
Participate in design reviews, DFMEA, PFMEA, root-cause analysis, and technical decision reviews.
Ensure changes are supported by objective evidence and completed through the applicable engineering change and phase-gate processes.
Engineering Change and Implementation
Lead productivity projects from opportunity assessment through design, validation, approval, factory implementation, and savings realization.
Create and coordinate engineering change requests, drawings, specifications, bills of material, qualification records, and implementation plans.
Support prototype builds, pilot runs, factory trials, compliance testing, and production release activities.
Monitor post-implementation performance and address technical, quality, or manufacturing issues associated with approved changes.
Supplier, Component, and Manufacturing Collaboration
Partner with Procurement and suppliers to evaluate cost-down proposals, alternate materials, process improvements, and commercial opportunities.
Work with Component Engineering to qualify approved component changes and incorporate optimized parts into the preferred component portfolio.
Collaborate with Manufacturing Engineering to reduce scrap, labor content, cycle time, tooling cost, and process variation.
Support alternate-source and localization initiatives when they provide validated cost or continuity benefits.
Financial Analysis and Performance Management
Develop credible cost models and business cases using agreed material, labor, tooling, capital, logistics, and implementation assumptions.
Track forecasted, validated, implemented, and realized savings in partnership with Finance and Supply Chain.
Monitor project timing, cycle time, implementation rate, savings estimate accuracy, and risks to delivery.
Provide clear project status, escalation needs, and productivity forecasts to engineering and business leadership.
Product Safety and Regulatory Compliance
Ensure productivity changes maintain compliance with applicable product safety, environmental, labeling, and market-access requirements.
Partner with Compliance and Quality to determine required testing, documentation, agency notification, and change approval activities.
Maintain traceable technical records demonstrating that changes were reviewed, tested, and approved before implementation.
Support field-quality investigations and corrective actions when productivity changes may be involved.
Basic Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
8+ years of engineering experience in product development, sustaining engineering, value engineering, manufacturing engineering, or product-cost improvement.
Demonstrated experience providing technical leadership, mentoring engineers, and coordinating multiple engineering projects or workstreams.
Experience leading engineering changes from concept through validation and production implementation.
Demonstrated ability to analyze product cost and translate opportunities into executable technical projects.
Working knowledge of engineering drawings, bills of material, specifications, tolerance analysis, and change-control processes.
Experience working with cross-functional teams, suppliers, and manufacturing operations.
Strong analytical, project-management, and structured problem-solving skills.
Ability to consolidate project portfolio information, communicate progress clearly, and escalate technical, schedule, resource, and savings-delivery risks to management.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, including communication with leadership.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with consumer electronics, embedded systems, electromechanical products, or life-safety products.
Knowledge of value analysis/value engineering, design-to-cost, teardown analysis, target costing, or should-cost methods.
Experience with design for manufacturing, design for assembly, Lean, Six Sigma, or continuous-improvement methods.
Familiarity with UL, FCC, EMC, RoHS, REACH, and related regulatory requirements.
Understanding of DFMEA, PFMEA, reliability testing, root-cause analysis, and corrective-action methods.
Experience with component qualification, alternate-source validation, and supplier change management.
Working knowledge of PLM, ERP, engineering change, and cost-management systems.
Experience supporting global engineering, supplier, and manufacturing teams.
Prior experience as a technical lead, project lead, or informal team lead in a global engineering organization.
Experience reviewing technical work and coaching engineers through complex technical decisions and project execution challenges.
Success Metrics
Validated annual savings delivered.
Savings achieved versus target.
Productivity project implementation rate.
Savings estimate accuracy from initial approval through implementation.
Productivity project cycle time and milestone performance.
Value-engineering pipeline strength and conversion rate.
Product cost reduction achieved without adverse quality, safety, compliance, or supply impact.
Post-implementation quality and manufacturing performance.
Timeliness, accuracy, and quality of consolidated Productivity Engineering project reporting and savings outlook.
Effectiveness of risk escalation, resource coordination, and resolution of cross-project technical issues.
Effectiveness in mentoring Productivity Engineers and improving consistency of engineering methods, reviews, and documentation.