Technical Director

Telford
5 days ago
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Technical Director – Design

  1. Role Purpose
  • Mandate: Accelerate innovation and deliver new product Introduction (NPI) that is successful in existing and new markets through delivery of design strategy.
  • Board Role: Share high-level priority-setting with the board; translate strategy into decisive roadmaps, resources, and delivery.
  • Team Context: Lead a cross functional design engineering team; work through a direct report manager to remove blockers, focus effort, and raise the pace.
  1. Outcomes
  • NPI Throughput: Increase NPD delivery (2–3 new product launches in first year)
  • Innovation Pipeline: Build a validated, Board‑aligned pipeline
  • Market Fit & Customer Proof: Systematic customer validation at key stages
  • Design Quality & Reliability: Prototype validation and prevention of scope creep
  • Team Focus: Reduce scope creep; establish weekly cadence and WIP limits; improve engagement scores and cycle predictability.
  1. Accountability
  • Owns: Design strategy execution, engineering standards, resource allocation within design, stage‑gate discipline, technical risk management.
  • Influences: Product portfolio priorities, pricing/positioning, investment cases; collaborates with Ops and Finance on trade‑offs.
  • Commits: Delivery against Board‑agreed roadmaps; transparent reporting of risk/mitigation; escalation before schedule slips.
  1. Core Responsibilities
  • Set Pace & Focus: Translate Board priorities into monthly design KPIs
  • Gateway Leadership: Install gateways with stakeholder validation, DFMEA, and reliability targets.
  • Technical Direction: Define architecture choices, platform strategy, and standards; arbitrate key technical decisions.
  • Responsibility range: Research and discovery to production ready.
  • Resource & Capacity: Balance team workloads through manager (direct report); consultant and specialist management; fix bottlenecks (test, tooling, supplier readiness).
  • Customer & Market Integration: Embed structured voice‑of‑customer; ensure requirements are testable, traceable, and risk‑rated.
  • Standards and regulations: Embed compliance with industry and business standards into team and product design structure.
  • Technology Integration: Embed structured AI, 3D printing and robotics into a design for manufacture structure.
  • Quality & Lifecycle: Drive design for manufacturability, serviceability, and cost; own design transfer to manufacturing.
  • Board Engagement: Provide clear dashboards on pipeline, risks, and investment needs; propose stop/go/accelerate decisions.
  • Talent & Culture: Coach senior engineers; encourage deep work and high‑leverage innovation; raise standards without micro‑managing

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