Director of Customer Applications Engineering, VulcanForms

• 12+ years in applications engineering, sales engineering, or technical product roles in a manufacturing environment, including 3+ years leading technical customer-facing teams
• 6+ years in additive manufacturing part engineering
• Track record of building or scaling a technical sales function, including hiring, setting standards, and defining processes across functions
• Able to assess technical feasibility quickly and explain constraints and tradeoffs to technical, commercial, and executive audiences, both internally and with senior customer stakeholders
• Comfortable working as a player/coach, carrying key pursuits personally while developing a team
• Experience working with product or manufacturing cost structures and giving technical input to pricing decisions
• Strong written communication; able to set documentation standards a team can follow and engineering teams can build from
• A strong relationship-builder who is credible with sophisticated industrial buyers and trusted by internal engineering peers

Desirable

• The Director, Applications Engineering builds and leads the technical function that connects customer product requirements to VulcanForms' manufacturing capability
• You will own how VulcanForms evaluates technical fit early in the sales cycle, scoping out opportunities before they reach our product development teams, and build trust and value-based technical relationships with key customers from first conversation through onboarding & product development
• We are looking for a player/coach who will be a senior technical voice alongside sales while building a team of applications engineers and evolving how we deliver value to external and internal customers
• Build, hire, and develop an Applications Engineering team, moving to vertical specialization as the portfolio matures
• Set team standards for feasibility assessment, concept design, and requirements documentation, and track metrics that show the function's impact
• Own the technical qualification process of inbound opportunities, filtering out poor-fit parts and programs before they reach BU technical teams
• Produce or oversee first-cut design concepts and feasibility assessments that highlight risks, constraints, and tradeoffs early, with credibility and customers' trust
• Design and execute a process to capture “no-go” part data and technical capability requirements to support our product development process
• Serve as the senior technical partner to Commercial leadership on proposals, strategic pursuits, and executive-level customer conversations
• Ensure customer requirements are fully captured and turned into documentation NPI and BU engineering teams can act on, so nothing is lost between customer intent and internal execution