Director, Engineering

Job Summary

The Director of Engineering – Product Launch is responsible for leading and overseeing the successful launch of all McLaren-developed products into Linamar manufacturing facilities. This role provides technical and organizational leadership during the critical launch phase, ensuring designs are fully industrialized, transferable, and capable of meeting quality, cost, and timing objectives. The Director partners closely with cross-functional and cross-site stakeholders to drive launch readiness, mitigate risk, and achieve stable production ramp-up across multiple Linamar locations.

Responsibility

• Define and develop product development organizational structure and capabilities for Priority 1 products.

• Directly manages others and is responsible for staffing, driving performance of each direct report and the team through yearly STAR DGO’s.

• Own end-to-end engineering execution for the launch phase of all McLaren products transferring into Linamar manufacturing facilities. 

• Serve as the engineering authority for launch readiness, ensuring products are fully industrialized and design intent is clearly communicated and transferred. 

• Establish, deploy, and govern a standardized global launch framework for McLaren-to-Linamar product introductions. 

• Act as the primary engineering interface between McLaren Engineering, Linamar receiving plants, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, and Program Management teams. 

• Lead cross-functional launch reviews, including DFMEA/PFMEA alignment, process readiness, run-at-rate, and PPAP approval. 

• Ensure product designs meet manufacturability, tooling, automation, capacity, and cycle-time requirements at receiving facilities. 

• Oversee tooling and equipment strategies, supporting buy-off, validation, and production readiness for launch builds. 

• Accountable for engineering support to achieve first-time quality and stable ramp-up performance at launch. 

• Ensure compliance with customer requirements, regulatory standards, and internal Linamar quality systems. 

• Lead structured root cause analysis and implementation of permanent corrective actions for launch-related issues. 

• Define, track, and report key launch performance indicators including timing, quality, cost, scrap, and ramp-up metrics. 

• Provide clear risk assessments, mitigation plans, and executive-level launch status updates. 

• Capture lessons learned and deploy best practices to improve future product launches and engineering transfers. 

• Drive continuous improvement in launch processes, documentation standards, and engineering handover methodologies. 

• Build organizational capability in advanced product launch, APQP execution, and global manufacturing transfer. 

• Partner with senior leadership to align launch execution with McLaren and Linamar strategic and commercial objectives. 

This job description is intended to convey information essential to understanding the scope of this position and it is not intended to be an exhaustive list of skills, efforts, duties, responsibilities or working conditions associated with the position. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Academic/Educational Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in engineering and 10+ years of related automotive experience. Master’s degree in technical field preferred. Must demonstrate increases in responsibility

Required Skills/Experience

• Extensive understanding of driveline/powertrain technology and business. Understandings of engineering disciplines and processes.

• Ability to read, analyze, and interpret the most complex documents. Ability to communicate effectively to employees. Ability to make effective and persuasive speeches and presentations on complex topics to customers, senior management, public groups and/or boards of directors.

• Ability to comprehend and apply advanced mathematics principles. Ability to work with concepts such as equations, limits, statistics and engineering tools.

• Ability to apply principles of logical or scientific thinking to a wide range of intellectual and practical problems.