Associate Manager, NPI Powertrain

What To Expect
The Associate Manager, NPI Powertrain is responsible for leading and executing all production launch activities for new or revised products within Giga Berlin's Battery & Drive Unit manufacturing facilities. This role ensures seamless integration of engineering, supply chain, and production teams to achieve "non-event launch" outcomes in line with program timelines.

What You'll Do- Own and drive production launch activities from project conception to handover, ensuring alignment with program milestones and the "non-event launch" objective. Collaborate with Production, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain teams to define project scope and deliverables.
- Lead, mentor, and performance-manage a cross-functional NPI team consisting of dedicated Battery and Drive Unit engineers. Establish individual and group performance plans, provide actionable feedback, and ensure team members are positioned to meet organisational goals.
- Oversee production change control processes to maintain operational continuity and product maturity. Ensure all material obsolescence targets are met post-launch, eliminating excess inventory or obsolete components.
- Coordinate priorities and support requirements with NPI peers (Vehicle, BOM, Logistics & Operations) to optimise team efficiency. Act as a central point of contact for resolving interdepartmental gaps and aligning action plans.
- Enforce adherence to NPI processes and guidelines while identifying opportunities to refine workflows. Lead continuous improvement initiatives to adapt to business needs.
- Lead project status reviews and strategic decision-making forums up to and including executive level. Share periodic project status reports, issue resolution tracking documentation, and recovery plans as required.
- Maintain transparent, frequent communication with peers, senior leadership, and cross-functional teams (Engineering, Quality, Production, Executive Leadership) to ensure visibility of project performance, risks, and mitigation strategies. Highlight specific areas of concern, along with support requests.
What You'll Bring- 10+ years of Management experience in automotive, high tech, or other high volume/high complexity manufacturing in a similar capacity coupled with demonstration of exceptionable ability.
- 5+ years of experience directly managing people in engineering or similar project management capacities.
- Production Operations Knowledge - Has a firm understanding of how complex production lines operate including key items such as industrial workings between facilities/departments, line balance, OEE, error proofing, etc.
- DFM (Design for manufacture) - Experienced at assessing manufacturability and able to clearly articulate issues and propose resolutions. A key indicator of success is driving this feedback upstream and achieving root cause resolution.
- Extremely knowledgeable of how material moves through the supply chain and throughout the factory. This includes everything from placement of an order, receiving of material, pull of material to the line, consumption of the material and delivery of the final product. Understanding of how to structure a configurable MBOM and associated order structure.
- Clear understanding of how the manufacturing validation process runs in relation to new products (methodology, validation plans, associated KPIs). Able to facilitate continuous development and betterment of process.
- Able to develop and sustain resource management plans in regard to current and future planned tasks.
- Excelled creative thinking skills; able to devise creative solutions to complicated problems.
- Team player: ability to work in a fast-paced, multi-cultural environment with cross-functional teams.
- Unquestionable professionalism at all times. Ensure the team are focused on the objectives and diffuse any conflicts as required.
- Outstanding critical thinking skills; adverse in various problem-solving methodologies.
- Deep understanding of production line layout, flow, and modelling. Should understand the following: job shops, batch, and flow production / takt, touch and cycle time / bottle neck / identification and methods for resolving / workstation organization and setup / lean manufacturing principles / statistical process control / designing single flow lines to build multiple products.
- Strong motivation to support the company mission is necessary to succeed.
, Tesla