Product Development Manager, Strapping Systems

This role owns product leadership and technical leadership for the Samuel Automation Strapping Systems portfolio. The position owns sustaining engineering, continuous improvement, and new product development. You will translate market and customer needs into competitive and scalable product platforms while ensuring product design quality, standardization, and engineering excellence.

One function of this role is to serve as the primary bridge between Samuel Packaging Systems Group (PSG) product management and Samuel Automation’s (SAI’s) engineering teams to deliver repeatable, competitive, and commercially successful strapping solutions. You must balance hands-on technical design with a people-first approach to leadership. By instilling a growth mindset within your team, you will empower them to navigate ambiguity, solve complex engineering challenges, and consistently deliver high-quality systems for our customers.

What You Will Be Accountable For

Product Strategy, Definition & Requirements

• Establish and own Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) in collaboration with PSG Product Management.

• Translate customer, market, and business needs into actionable requirements.

• Maintain traceability from requirements through design, validation, and release.

• Own product roadmaps, standardization strategies, product datasheets, and platform scalability initiatives.

• Provide competitive and market intelligence to support product direction.

New Product Development (NPD) & Introduction (NPI)

• Lead NPD and NPI activities and milestone governance for new strapping products.

• Ensure technical reviews, risk assessments, validation plans, and release criteria are completed.

• Drive successful product launches and transition into production.

Technical Leadership & Engineering Excellence

• Own product design quality, system integrity, and technical scalability for the strapping product portfolio.

• Lead R&D product design and project-based product development activities.

• Drive design standardization, engineering methods, and technical best practices.

• Define design collaboration strategies with other Samuel Automation business units and external design partners.

• Provide senior technical guidance and support escalation resolution.

• Promote an engineering culture aligned with Configure-to-Order platform objectives.

Strategic Technical Expectations

• Establish product and technical requirements tools and methods.

• Define scalable knowledge management and engineering center-of-excellence practices.

• Drive product catalogue standardization and design-driven cost reduction initiatives.

• Measure and improve engineering efficiency, product quality, and team engagement.

People Leadership & Team Development

• Lead, develop, and coach a multidisciplinary team of mechanical, electrical, and controls/software designers.

• Establish performance objectives and conduct regular performance reviews.

• Promote a highly collaborative, inclusive work environment where team members feel safe to propose ideas and fail forward.

• Encourage broad ideation and innovation sessions and progressively narrow scope to realistic, executable and cost-effective machine designs.

• Help the team translate complex, unclear, unknown, or evolving internal or customer requirements into robust, actionable technical specifications.

• Support employee growth through mentoring, training, and career development planning.

• Drive employee engagement, accountability, and continuous improvement culture.

• Participate in recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and workforce planning activities.

• Manage team capacity and prioritize engineering resources across sustaining and NPD activities.

Standards, Compliance & Industry Expertise

• Serve as the in-house expert for applicable regulatory, safety, and industry certification requirements.

• Ensure compliance requirements are integrated into product and design decisions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Mechatronics, Systems Engineering, or related discipline.

• 10+ years of experience in automation, machinery design, product development, or systems engineering.

• Strong product requirements and NPI experience

• Demonstrated experience leading and coaching technical teams and leading product design and standardization initiatives.

• Solid understanding of industrial automation systems and engineered machinery.

• Strong communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.

• Knowledge of strapping equipment and packaging automation preferred.

Special Requirements

• Occasional travel to customer and internal sites within Canada, USA, and globally

• Ability to work effectively across engineering, manufacturing, and commercial environments.

• Comfort operating in a dynamic and evolving product portfolio environment.

This is for a current open position. AI is not used in the screening of candidate resumes.

The base salary range for this position is $122,800 - $153,500 per year (CAD). The posted range reflects the expected base salary for this position. Actual base salary will be determined based on factors such as geographic location, skills, education, and experience, as well as internal equity considerations. Offers are typically made within the range and not at the top of the range to support growth and progression. This position is eligible to participate in a short-term incentive plan. Incentive awards, if any, are based on business and individual performance and are not guaranteed.