Product Developer & Engineer (Automotive Aftermarket Division)

Job Description:

Product Engineer / Product Development (Automotive Aftermarket Division)

Collaborate with Innovative 3Mers Around the World

Choosing where to start and grow your career has a major impact on your professional and personal life, so it’s equally important you know that the company that you choose to work at, and its leaders, will support and guide you. With a variety of people, global locations, technologies and products, 3M is a place where you can collaborate with other curious, creative 3Mers.

This position provides an opportunity to transition from other private, public, government or military experience to a 3M career.

The Impact You’ll Make in this Role

As a Product Engineer/Product Developer you will have the opportunity to tap into your curiosity and collaborate with some of the most innovative people around the world to support Abrasives Portfolio in Automotive Aftermarket Division. Here, you will make an impact by:

• Managing product portfolio health by driving continuous improvement and risk reduction.

• Driving portfolio optimization via raw material changes that support regulatory requirements and supply chain simplification, including alternate evaluations, equivalency testing, material standardization, and structured change control.

• Collaborating with a cross-functional team to develop high-impact innovative abrasive products to support Abrasives business.

• Leveraging 3M technologies to develop and scale up novel, high-performance abrasive products.

• Applying knowledge of chemistry, chemical engineering, or material science to solve complex problems.

• Building product concepts to demonstrate feasibility and scale up into manufacturing.

• Applying technical and leadership skills to generate project scopes, plans, and design of experiments

• Strengthening 3M’s proprietary position through development of intellectual property.

• Providing support to manufacturing organizations as needed to ensure product consistency and quality.

• Utilizing good communication skills to inspire, influence, motivate and teach other team members.

• Authoring and maintaining product lifecycle documentation, including specifications, bill of materials, drawings, product claims, and product changes.

• Investigating and resolving product performance issues through structured problem-solving, data analysis, and lab experimentation.

• Collaborating with R&D, operations, supply chain, procurement, regulatory, EHS, and quality partners to deliver business objectives.

• Interfacing with customers, as needed, to align on requirements and confirm product performance.

• Developing and refining test methods relevant to customer use conditions and internal verification.

Your Skills and Expertise 
 

To set you up for success in this role from day one, 3M requires (at a minimum) the following qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in science or engineering discipline (e.g., Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry) from an accredited university completed and verified prior to start.

• Experience with statistical design and analysis: planning and executing DOEs, interpreting results to make data-driven decisions, and using tools such as Minitab and Excel to analyze and communicate findings inclusive of academic and internship experience.

Additional qualifications that could help you succeed even further in this role include:

• Experience in research & development, product engineering, manufacturing, scale-up, or new product introduction (private, public, government, or military).

• Demonstrated product lifecycle management experience: authoring and maintaining product documentation (specifications, BOMs, recipes, SOPs, work instructions), managing structured change control, coordinating design transfer packages, and driving continuous improvement in yield, cost, and stability.

• Knowledge of abrasives, and/or web/films product architectures.

• Experience planning and executing laboratory experiments.

• Experience developing test methods tied to customer needs.

• Prior exposure to patent searching, interpretation, and contribution to IP.

• Strong problem-solving skills using structured approaches; ability to simplify complexity and drive to root cause.

• Excellent communication skills (oral, written, presentation) with the ability to influence across teams and geographies.

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office; statistical and data visualization tools (e.g., Minitab, Excel, PowerPoint) a plus