Overview In this role, you lead Manufacturing Engineering, Maintenance, Tooling, Automation, and Facilities at the Bristol site to drive reliability, safety, and operational excellence. You partner across functions to advance capital projects, process optimization, and manufacturing innovation for luxury products. You will balance strategic leadership with hands-on engineering and problem-solving to keep equipment performing at peak. This is a chance to shape the Bristol Operations as a premier luxury manufacturer in North America.
Compensation / Benefits- day 1 benefits
- performance bonus/variable incentive compensation
- competitive total rewards package
- health and wellbeing programs
- career growth opportunities
- diverse and inclusive workplace
Responsibilities- Lead Manufacturing Engineering and Maintenance teams, setting goals and cultivating accountability, safety, and continuous improvement
- Develop and execute reliability strategies to maximize uptime, OEE, asset utilization, and manufacturing throughput
- Establish preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance programs to reduce unplanned downtime
- Drive standards for equipment operation, care, maintenance, troubleshooting, and performance management
- Identify, justify, and implement capital investments for safety, quality, productivity, automation, and capacity expansion
- Develop and implement innovative manufacturing technologies, automation, and controls architectures
- Lead continuous improvement via Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and structured problem-solving
- Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for equipment, controls, automation, and quality issues
- Provide technical leadership for new product introductions ensuring readiness and scalability
- Oversee machine shop and tooling operations to support production and R&D
- Provide hands-on technical support, troubleshooting, and process improvements as needed
- Collaborate with Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, Product Development, Finance, and Commercial teams
- Develop manufacturing standards, SOPs, and training to sustain performance and capability
- Benchmark best practices and shape long-term manufacturing strategies to position Kohler in premium markets
Key requirements- Bachelor's Degree in Engineering (listed)
- 8+ years of progressive engineering/maintenance/automation/leadership experience in manufacturing
- Proven leadership in building high-performing teams and driving cultural transformation
- Ability to balance strategic leadership with hands-on execution
- Experience commissioning, troubleshooting, maintaining, modifying, and optimizing manufacturing equipment and automated systems
- Strong mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, controls, and process troubleshooting skills
- Experience implementing automation, reliability programs, Lean, and continuous improvement methodologies
- Working knowledge of PLC programming, HMI, robotics, vision systems, controls architecture, industrial networking (preferred)
- Proven track record delivering productivity, cost, quality, and equipment performance gains
- Experience leading capital projects from concept to operations sustainability
- Preferred: Six Sigma and/or Lean certification; experience in premium configurable manufacturing environments
- leadership
- cross-functional collaboration
- strong communication
- manufacturing automation
- equipment reliability programs
- Lean Manufacturing
