Global Head of Product Development

Your Tasks

• Lead the global Product Development organization by leading and developing engineering managers and multidisciplinary teams covering mechanical design, electronics, embedded software, integration and related product engineering disciplines.
• Own functional engineering performance, capacity, headcount, budgets, external development resources, succession planning and capability investment within agreed plans.
• Build and strengthen engineering capabilities across WIK locations, including refurbishment engineering and future regional development needs where justified, and strengthen cross-site engineering competencies and effective knowledge transfer within a globally governed technology organization, with clear functional ownership and collaboration across Asia and Europe.
• Create an accountable, technically rigorous organization with measurable improvements in engineering productivity, quality and delivery, and lead structured engineering capability assessments, competency mapping and organizational improvement initiatives; develop engineering managers, retention and succession plans, and demonstrate measurable progress in capability and product development delivery performance.
• Own multidisciplinary product-development execution by taking functional accountability for engineering execution from approved requirements and system architecture through detailed product design, integration, verification, design release and transfer to industrialization.
• Ensure strong mechanical and electromechanical design execution, integrated with electronics, embedded software, controls and product-level performance, and resolve cross-disciplinary technical issues and trade-offs involving product performance, reliability, safety, compliance, cost, schedule and manufacturability.
• Drive requirements traceability, design reviews, DFMEA, engineering verification, configuration control, design maturity and disciplined engineering changes, and establish engineering excellence practices across disciplines, including DFX (design for manufacturability, automation, assembly and reliability), simulation, tolerance analysis, DFMEA, systematic root-cause and failure analysis, value engineering and evidence-based design verification.
• Connect product development with manufacturing by bringing practical manufacturing and industrialization knowledge into design decisions from the beginning of development, and apply DFM/DFA, tooling and process awareness, tolerance analysis, design-to-cost and production-readiness principles to improve product robustness and launch maturity.
• Drive end-to-end engineering maturity from design through NPI and industrialization readiness, using knowledge of tooling, automation, manufacturing processes and production constraints to prevent downstream quality, cost and reliability issues, and work closely with Operations, Industrialization, Sourcing, Quality, Labs and Product Compliance on technical risks, validation evidence, design transfer and production ramp-up; retain clear boundaries between product design and manufacturing execution.
• Work within WIK's global Technology organization by executing within technology strategy, architecture principles, platform direction and investment priorities established through CTO governance; work with Category Technical Leads for Coffee Systems, Water Systems and Personal Care to translate category technical priorities, product requirements and portfolio needs into executable engineering plans; partner with Experts on system requirements and architecture, Advanced Engineering and Platforms on technology transfer, and Global Labs on validation; allocate multidisciplinary engineering capabilities across categories according to agreed portfolio priorities, balancing delivery commitments, resource constraints, reuse opportunities and technical risk.