Technical Sales Engineer

Company Description

Founded in 1912, ITW (NYSE: ITW) is a global industrial company built around a differentiated and proprietary business model. The company’s seven industry-leading segments leverage the ITW Business Model to generate solid growth with best-in-class margins and returns in markets where highly innovative, customer-focused solutions are required. ITW’s approximately 45,000 dedicated colleagues around the world thrive in the company’s decentralized, entrepreneurial culture. In 2019, the company achieved revenues of $14.1 billion, with roughly half coming from outside North America.

ITW Deltar Fasteners is a large division within the Automotive Segment and serves all the major OEMs and their tier suppliers with plastic fasteners. Locations include:  Frankfort, IL; Chippewa Falls, WI and our Commercial Sales and Engineering in Troy, MI. 

The division drives profitability by leveraging it’s innovative solutions and application engineering.  In addition to ITW’s industry leading research and development capabilities, ITW Deltar Fasteners enhances our customers’ competitive advantage by:

• Maintaining advanced engineering and manufacturing facilities in NA.
• Exchanging product, process and benchmarking information with sister units worldwide.
• Continually improving processes, material and designs to ensure every product exceeds customer specifications while providing unparalleled value.

Job Description

The Technical Sales Engineer will be responsible for engineering & sales support as needed for Tesla directly and related tiers. They will report to the Regional Sales Manager with additional support/guidance from OEM Global Key Account managers as well as project engineers (Chippewa Falls, WI & Frankfort, IL). The Technical Sales Engineer will be responsible for supporting the sales and engineering team by means of communicating technical information with the customer and internal project teams. This position will have direct communications with customers and tier suppliers to develop, obtain and validate the best solution for the application by applying knowledge of basic engineering principles. Requires some (but limited) product design direction for new parts and assemblies with varying degrees of complexity and high degree of creativity. Most of the responsibility will be in working with the customer to define the application, identify the best solution and communicate with the design team on the requirements. This role requires flexibility, ability to manage multiple projects and work with several stakeholders.

• Work closely with global Key Account Manager and colleagues from other global regions.
• Initiate and follow up on new product development and growth opportunities to support the division.
• Leverage local & global market knowledge to focus on growing products and introduce new ones applying an “outside – in” ITW discipline.
• Nurtures customer relationships that provide insight and a landscape where ITW has a competitive advantage through our “cradle to grave” relationships.
• Utilizes benchmarking tools for vehicle areas and associated products.  
• Act as the local Tesla support for the ITW NA, China, and Europe sales and engineering team for customer technical discussions, launch/project development, and customer engineering activity.
• Support proliferation and protection projects with product approvals in Tesla’s HQ.
• Develop and maintain relationships with customer engineering key decision makers and influencers.
• Manage and help coordinate project assignments with the sales and engineering teams to meet specific customer requirements. Transfer projects to the teams through clear communication of customer technical (and sales) requirements.
• Provide initial evaluation of quality concerns at local customer facilities; transfer information and insights to the Quality Department for full coordinated response.
• Perform basic testing of products in application at the customer locations to help build the customer relationship. Provide application expertise through technical visits at customers.
• Other tasks and duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree - B.A. /B.S. from four-year College; Master’s Degree a plus 
• Minimum 5-7 years of sales experience in the automotive industry
• Frequent travel to Tesla California and Texas and ITW North America facilities; primarily domestic and occasionally world-wide.
• Work efficiently without significant supervision.
• Technical Sales experience with Tesla preferred, proven track record of product knowledge including plastic and metals fasteners a plus. 
• Requires overall knowledge of various areas of the vehicle – interior/exterior, body/chassis, doors, fluid and electrical routing