Engineering Director Opportunity - Private Equity

We are partnering with a high-growth private equity-backed design and manufacturing business in Staffordshire to appoint an Engineering Director to lead and transform its end-to-end product development and delivery capability.

This is a key executive leadership role, reporting directly to the CEO and sitting on the Executive Leadership Team, responsible for shaping how engineered solutions are conceived, developed, prototyped, delivered, and deployed at scale.

About the Role

The Engineering Director will unify previously siloed engineering, design, project delivery, innovation, and quality functions into a single high-performance organisation. You will own the full engineering lifecycle – from early concept and design through to prototyping, validation, manufacturing readiness, and customer deployment. This is a pivotal role in enabling the business to scale faster, improve delivery performance, and strengthen product robustness in demanding industrial environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a multi-disciplinary engineering organisation (Design Engineering, PMO, Innovation Lab, Quality)
• Define and implement an integrated engineering operating model focused on speed, quality, and manufacturability
• Own end-to-end concept-to-deployment delivery for customer solutions
• Drive design excellence, standardisation, and manufacturability across all products
• Lead rapid prototyping and innovation capability to accelerate product development cycles
• Improve project delivery performance across scope, time, and budget
• Own engineering quality systems, ensuring reliability, durability, and compliance
• Strengthen cross-functional collaboration with Commercial, Operations, and Procurement teams
• Build and develop a high-performing engineering leadership team

What We’re Looking For

• Senior engineering leadership experience in industrial, manufacturing, or product development environments
• Proven success leading multi-disciplinary engineering teams
• Strong background in mechanical design, fabrication, and engineered systems
• Experience delivering complex projects from concept through to production and deployment
• Track record of implementing engineering processes, governance, and delivery improvement
• Commercially aware with a strong balance between cost, performance, and manufacturability

Why This Role?

This is a rare opportunity to:

• Shape a full engineering function from concept through to field deployment
• Influence company strategy as part of the Executive Leadership Team
• Build a scalable, high-performance engineering organisation
• Directly impact customer delivery, product quality, and innovation speed