Engineering & Productization Manager – Fabrication & Manufacturing

Loenbro · Dallas

About Loenbro

Loenbro is a trusted, long-term construction lifecycle partner to thousands of customers across the U.S. Our market spans all industries and our service offerings include Critical Electrical, Mechanical & Structural, Soft Crafts, Inspection, Underground Maintenance and Installation, and Fabrication. Our expertise lies in simplifying the complex and establishing long-standing relationships with our partners. We have a national presence but a local approach—every customer benefits from our capabilities and our care.

At Loenbro, we don't just offer jobs—we build careers grounded in integrity, teamwork, excellence, and purpose. Join a team where your expertise is valued, your growth is supported, and your work helps expand the reach of the critical infrastructure that powers communities across the nation.

Job Summary

The Engineering & Productization Manager is responsible for converting market demand and project opportunities into standardized, repeatable, and commercially viable fabricated and manufactured solutions that advance Loenbro's transformation from project-specific fabrication toward a scalable manufacturing platform.

Reporting to the Senior Vice President of Manufacturing, this role leads the technical development and productization of fully integrated modular solutions for Loenbro's targeted end markets. The Manager will establish strategic working relationships with engineering and packaging firms, developers, owners, general contractors, EPCs, OEMs, technology providers, and internal Loenbro operating groups to identify recurring needs, shape basis-of-design requirements, and create solutions optimized for off-site manufacturing and field installation.

The position will be the technical integrator for Loenbro's hub-and-spoke manufacturing model, with repeatable products and modules engineered for final assembly, integration, testing, and shipment through designated manufacturing hubs, while components and subassemblies are allocated to spoke facilities wherever capability, capacity, quality, logistics, and economics support the work. The successful candidate will combine engineering leadership, design management, product-development discipline, manufacturing knowledge, commercial judgment, and strong external relationship skills — moving concepts through design, validation, pilot production, standard release, configuration control, and continuous improvement.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Productization Strategy & Portfolio Development

Develop and execute an engineering and productization roadmap aligned with Loenbro's Fabrication & Manufacturing strategic plan, growth priorities, available capabilities, and targeted end markets.
Identify recurring customer needs, project scopes, assemblies, and system configurations suitable for standardization, modularization, cataloging, and repeatable production.
Prioritize product-development investments using market demand, strategic customer pull, addressable volume, margin, capacity utilization, technical feasibility, capital needs, and speed to market.
Maintain a stage-gate portfolio from opportunity and concept through business case, engineering, prototype, validation, commercialization, standard release, and lifecycle management.

Strategic Partnerships & Early Market Engagement

Develop strategic relationships with engineering and packaging firms, developers, owners, hyperscalers, general contractors, EPCs, OEMs, technology providers, and other partners capable of accelerating standardized modular solutions.
Lead technical engagement in design-assist, early contractor involvement, basis-of-design development, constructability workshops, and product-definition sessions.
Establish clear partnership models addressing responsibilities, intellectual property, design ownership, licensing, exclusivity, confidentiality, engineering liability, and continuous improvement.
Represent Loenbro's technical and productization capabilities in customer presentations, industry forums, conferences, and strategic partner meetings, translating partner and customer insight into actionable product requirements.

Integrated Modular Solution Development

Lead development of fully integrated modular systems combining mechanical, piping, structural, electrical, controls, equipment, insulation, testing, and other disciplines as applicable.
Create repeatable solutions including electrical prefabrication assemblies, electrical and mechanical skids, cooling and liquid-cooling assemblies, modular piping systems, pipe racks, utility modules, power packages, and process modules.
Define module boundaries, battery limits, interfaces, connection strategies, transportation envelopes, lifting concepts, installation sequencing, commissioning approach, and turnover requirements.
Coordinate multidisciplinary design reviews and resolve interface risks before release to procurement and manufacturing, ensuring solutions address total installed cost and lifecycle value.

Hub-and-Spoke Manufacturing Integration

Develop engineering and work-allocation strategies that enable final integration and testing at designated hubs while distributing components and subassemblies to capable spoke facilities.
Partner with Operations and project leadership to map facility capabilities, capacity, labor, equipment, certifications, geography, logistics, and cost to product work breakdown structures.
Design products with clear manufacturing breakdown structures, standardized interfaces, controlled tolerances, kitting requirements, quality hold points, and assembly instructions that support multi-facility execution.
Recommend make/buy and hub/spoke allocation decisions and develop repeatable handoff, packaging, shipping, and traceability requirements for work moving between facilities.

Engineering Management & Design Governance

Plan, lead, and coordinate internal and external engineering resources, including discipline engineers, designers, BIM/VDC personnel, consultants, and specialty partners.
Establish design criteria, engineering execution plans, deliverable registers, schedules, budgets, reviews, approval workflows, and responsibility matrices.
Ensure designs comply with applicable codes, standards, contractual requirements, professional-practice obligations, customer specifications, and Loenbro quality systems.
Manage outsourced engineering performance, scope, schedule, cost, and quality, and ensure appropriate professional review, stamping, and jurisdictional compliance through qualified engineering entities.

Design for Manufacturing & Assembly

Embed Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) principles in products to simplify fabrication, reduce part count and labor, improve repeatability, enable automation, and minimize field work.
Standardize materials, components, connections, joint configurations, dimensional schemes, equipment selections, controls interfaces, and fabrication processes where beneficial.
Partner with the Welding & Process Improvement Manager, Quality, Supply Chain, shop leadership, and craft subject-matter experts to ensure designs match production capabilities and improvement roadmaps.
Facilitate design-to-cost, value-engineering, constructability, and production-readiness reviews before design release, using production and field feedback to continually improve standard designs.

Prototype, Validation & Production Readiness

Plan and lead prototypes, mockups, pilot builds, first-article production, factory acceptance testing, and product validation activities.
Define measurable acceptance criteria for performance, quality, safety, manufacturability, cost, cycle time, installation, commissioning, and repeatability.
Document lessons learned, resolve design and process issues, and complete formal production-readiness reviews before scalable release.
Establish controlled work instructions, inspection and test plans, tooling requirements, training materials, and quality records with Operations and Quality, confirming that capacity, supply chain, and skills support forecast demand.

Configuration, Intellectual Property & Lifecycle Management

Establish product data management, document control, naming, revision, release, configuration, and change-control standards for repeatable products.
Maintain approved product baselines, option matrices, bills of material, design libraries, standard details, calculations, models, and manufacturing documentation.
Prevent uncontrolled project customization and ensure deviations are technically reviewed, commercially understood, approved, and captured for future learning.
Work with Legal and leadership to identify, protect, license, and appropriately use Loenbro and partner intellectual property, and manage product obsolescence, supplier changes, and end-of-life decisions.

Commercialization & Cross-Functional Execution

Partner with Business Development to connect customer demand to the product roadmap and support technical selling, strategic pursuits, and account development.
Partner with Estimating, Finance, Supply Chain, and Operations to develop target costs, standard labor assumptions, pricing inputs, capital requirements, production capacity, and business cases.
Coordinate transition of awarded products and projects to the Manager of Projects and manufacturing operations with complete engineering, procurement, quality, schedule, and risk information.
Monitor actual cost, labor, schedule, quality, and commercial performance against the product business case, and support portfolio decisions regarding investment, scale-up, redesign, or retirement.

Target End-Market Development

Develop solutions supporting mission critical/data centers, power generation and behind-the-meter power, semiconductor, advanced manufacturing, water/wastewater, mining and metals, pharmaceutical/life sciences, food and beverage, energy, and other complex industrial markets.
Maintain awareness of customer capital programs, technology roadmaps, engineering standards, procurement strategies, code developments, and competitive solutions within targeted markets.
Identify transferable platforms and common design elements that allow Loenbro to leverage engineering investment across customers, geographies, and adjacent markets.
Recommend strategic capability, certification, technology, talent, equipment, and partnership investments needed to serve priority markets.

Leadership, Systems & Continuous Improvement

Lead, coach, and develop assigned engineers, designers, product-development personnel, and matrixed technical teams.
Establish standard engineering and product-development processes, templates, design reviews, metrics, decision rights, and governance across the manufacturing network.
Build a culture of technical rigor, curiosity, customer focus, commercial awareness, collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Capture and share lessons learned across facilities, projects, products, and partners, and support annual strategic planning, capital planning, and resource forecasting as requested.

Key Performance Indicators

Revenue, backlog, and gross margin generated from repeatable or productized solutions.
Number and value of strategic engineering, packaging, OEM, developer, owner, and GC partnerships activated.
Product concepts advanced through defined stage gates to commercial release.
Engineering schedule and budget performance; prototype, first-article, validation, and production-readiness success.
Reduction in engineering hours and design cycle time through reuse, and percentage of common parts, standard configurations, and controlled interfaces.
Labor-hour, cycle-time, quality, safety, and total-installed-cost improvement versus traditional execution.
Hub and spoke utilization attributable to standardized product work, and forecastable multi-facility production volume and shop loading.
Design change, rework, nonconformance, and field-fit performance; time from qualified opportunity to production-ready release.
Customer adoption, repeat orders, partner satisfaction, and integrity of configuration control and product documentation.

Key Qualifications

10+ years of progressive experience in engineering management, product development, modularization, fabrication, manufacturing, EPC, industrial construction, systems integration, or a related environment.
Demonstrated experience leading multidisciplinary engineered products, skids, modules, packaged systems, or repeatable fabricated assemblies from concept through production and field deployment.
Strong working knowledge of engineering deliverables, BIM/VDC, procurement, fabrication, manufacturing, quality, testing, logistics, installation, commissioning, and project execution.
Demonstrated knowledge of DfMA, constructability, modularization, standardization, configuration management, and design change control.
Experience managing external engineering firms, consultants, OEMs, packaging partners, or other technical partners.
Ability to evaluate technical feasibility, customer value, manufacturing readiness, risk, cost, schedule, capacity, and return on investment.
Ability to interpret contracts, scopes, drawings, models, calculations, specifications, codes, bills of material, and technical submittals.
Strong commercial judgment and ability to collaborate with Business Development, Estimating, Finance, Legal, Supply Chain, Projects, and Operations.
Strong leadership, facilitation, negotiation, presentation, written communication, and executive stakeholder-management skills.
Ability and willingness to travel regularly to customer, partner, project, supplier, and Loenbro manufacturing locations.
Professional Engineer licensure, or ability to work effectively within a delegated professional-design structure, preferred.
Advanced degree in engineering, engineering management, manufacturing, or business preferred.
Experience with integrated mechanical/electrical modules, data-center cooling systems, electrical skids, modular piping, utility racks, packaged power systems, process modules, or similar manufactured solutions preferred.
Experience developing and commercializing product platforms within an engineer-to-order, configure-to-order, or mass-customization environment preferred.
Knowledge of applicable ASME, AWS, API, NEC, UL, NFPA, IBC, and other codes and certification frameworks relevant to targeted products preferred.
Experience with product lifecycle management, common data environments, BIM/VDC platforms, parametric design, digital fabrication, ERP/MRP integration, or design automation preferred.
Lean, Six Sigma, systems engineering, value engineering, project management, or product-management credentials preferred.
Existing relationships within Loenbro's target end markets and partner ecosystem preferred.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Structural, Industrial, Manufacturing, or another relevant engineering discipline required; equivalent highly relevant technical leadership experience may be considered.

Physical Demands and Work Environment

The physical demands and work environment described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Work Environment:

Combination of office/remote work and frequent travel to customer sites, partner facilities, and Loenbro manufacturing hubs and spokes; travel of approximately 30–50%, based on business needs.
Regular visits to fabrication facilities, manufacturing shop floors, and industrial job sites to support design reviews, prototypes, first-article builds, and production readiness.
Potential exposure to noise, dust, chemicals, or other environmental factors typical of fabrication and manufacturing environments.
Periodic attendance at industry conferences, customer meetings, and technical forums, which may require regional and national travel by air and ground transportation.

This role requires compliance with all applicable safety regulations, personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements, and Loenbro's Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) policies.

Benefits

Loenbro offers a competitive salary, comprehensive benefits package, and rewards to those who join our team:

Medical, dental, and vision insurance
401(k) retirement plan with company match
Performance-based bonus plan
Long-term Incentives
Paid time off (PTO) and holiday pay
Life and disability insurance
Professional development and training opportunities
Employee assistance program (EAP)

Benefits eligibility may vary based on employment classification and hours worked.

Guided by Core Values (LEAD), grounded in grit and a commitment to excellence, Loenbro betters our families, customers, and local communities. If you're ready to be part of a company that LEADS by:

Living with Integrity
Exceeding Expectations
Acting with Urgency
Delivering Excellence

...we want to hear from you.

Loenbro is an Equal Opportunity Employer

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