Manager, Application Engineering

Position Title: Manager, Application Engineering
 

Position Summary

The Manager of Application Engineering leads a team of Application Engineers and Technical Support professionals responsible for delivering world-class technical support, application expertise, and customer solutions across the product portfolio. This role serves as the bridge between customers, Sales, Product Management, Engineering, and Operations to ensure exceptional customer experience while driving continuous improvement in technical support processes and capabilities.

The Manager of Application Engineering develops technical talent, establishes best practices, drives resolution of complex customer challenges, and ensures alignment of the application engineering function with the company's strategic objectives. The role combines people leadership, customer advocacy, technical expertise, and operational excellence.

Essential Responsibilities:

Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Application Engineers and Technical Support professionals. Establish team priorities, workload management, and performance expectations.
• Mentor and develop team’s technical depth, customer-facing capability, and future leadership potential.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, growth, and accountability to customers and peers.
• Identify skill gaps and implement development plans for the team. 
• Implement industry best practices for application engineering and technical support operations.

Commercial Support & Escalation Management

• Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Engineering, Quality, and Operations to solve customer challenges and support business growth.
• Support sales in understanding and offering solutions for customer needs. Drive the team’s active participation in the sales process.
• Ensure timely, accurate, and high-quality responses to customer technical inquiries and support requests.
• Maintain strong on-time delivery and service-level performance for technical case resolution.  Ensure complex technical escalations are handled effectively.
• Maintain ongoing business processes, including monitoring and managing case backlog, response times, and customer satisfaction metrics.
• Drive root cause analysis and corrective actions for recurring customer issues.

Technical Leadership

• Build strong familiarity with our products and applications to ensure the team is maintaining technical authority for customer applications, product capabilities, and system-level solutions as well as industry regulations and standards.
• Partner closely with Engineering and Product Management to communicate customer needs, market trends, and product improvement opportunities.
• Serve as an internal consultant across functions for technical and application-related matters. 
• Provide customer-driven insights that inform product roadmap and innovation efforts. 

Qualifications:

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Physics, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
• 7+ years of experience in Applications Engineering, Technical Support, Product Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related technical functions.
• 3+ years of people leadership experience.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication and customer-facing presentation abilities.
• Experience leading technical teams in manufacturing, instrumentation, industrial technology, or related environment.
• Must live reasonable commuting distance from our Boxborough, MA office. Role is hybrid, requiring 50% of time in-office.
• Ability to travel up to 20%

Preferred

• Experience supporting global customers and cross-functional organizations.
• Experience directly supporting sales & marketing efforts.
• Knowledge of process instrumentation, sensors, controls, automation, or industrial technologies.
• Experience working with CRM, case management, and knowledge management systems.
• Demonstrated success leading technical support transformation or continuous improvement initiatives.

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