Supplier Development Engineer – Electric Power

Career Area:

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other.  We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

About EPD

Caterpillar's Electric Power Division (EPD) offers integrated solutions, parts, and services to meet the needs of our various commercial and industrial electric power customers. EPD supports a wide range of customer applications across the globe, including providing back-up power to hospitals, providing emergency power when natural disasters strike, and supporting critical infrastructure for data centers, municipalities, and more. With a rich history of more than 95 years in the electric power business, our team has world-class expertise and a proven ability to adapt to changing demands. We’re committed to providing sustainable and reliable solutions to our customers. Join our team to help build a better, more sustainable world for future generations!

Job Summary
Join a dynamic team as a Supplier Development Engineer, where you'll be the driving force behind supplier quality and manufacturing excellence. In this role, you’ll assess the quality of suppliers to ensure products are defect-free and meet all manufacturing specifications and legal standards. You’ll lead efforts to resolve quality issues, enforce accountability, and improve process stability through audits, corrective actions, and hands-on engagement.

What You Will Do

• Serve as the primary point of contact between the business and dedicated suppliers.

• Lead weekly supplier meetings to review and resolve quality defects, ensuring timely renewals and issue resolution.

• Assign and approve PPAP (Production Part Approval Process) documentation for designated suppliers.

• Conduct random audits of supplier manufacturing processes to ensure compliance and process stability.

• Manage and track daily quality defects from suppliers, analyzing frequency and trends to drive improvements.

• Issue and manage corrective action requests (CARs), ensuring suppliers provide robust RCCA (Root Cause and Corrective Action) responses and sign off on agreed changes.

• Expedite resolution of supplier issues to meet production and quality expectations.

• Lead “sort and contain” activities to isolate non-conforming materials and prevent defective parts from entering production.

• Support suppliers in improving performance through process enhancements, quality assurance plans, and implementation of process controls.

• Research and assess potential vendors, including audits of their manufacturing environments and practices.

• Generate and maintain reports on supplier quality metrics, including defect rates and improvement opportunities.

Degree Requirement

• Degree or equivalent experience desired

What You Will Have

• Effective Communications: Working knowledge and understanding of effective communication concepts, tools and techniques; ability to effectively transmit, receive, and accurately interpret ideas, information, and needs through the application of appropriate communication behaviors.

  • Delivers helpful feedback that focuses on behaviors without offending the recipient.

  • Listens to feedback without defensiveness and uses it for own communication effectiveness.

  • Makes oral presentations and writes reports needed for own work.

  • Avoids technical jargon when inappropriate.

  • Looks for and considers non-verbal cues from individuals and groups.

• Process Improvement: Working knowledge and understanding and insight into evaluating current product quality and production methods and ability to maintains focus on the continuous improvement of processes, products and services.

  • Defines the critical workflow for executing key processes.

  • Identifies process problems that limit performance.

  • Implements methods for improving and establishing controls for critical processes.

  • Focuses on the most significant problems to maximize efficiency gains.

  • Surfaces systemic problems to be addressed at the organizational level.

• Production Part Approval Process (PPAP): E