Global Director Product Engineering

Join CHEP’s Global Product Innovation (GPI) team to lead the engineering backbone that turns ideas into scalable, sustainable physical products. You’ll own the end‑to‑end development lifecycle, elevate mechanical engineering excellence, and foster a culture of innovation and cross‑functional collaboration that drives growth, customer impact, and competitive advantage. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of CHEP’s physical product portfolio within a global, mission‑driven organization known for sustainability leadership and real customer impact.

You’ll operate at the nexus of innovation, engineering rigor, and commercial outcomes—empowering teams and delivering products that perform in the world’s most demanding supply chains.

The Global Director of Product Engineering will lead global product engineering function within GPI (Global Product Innovation); translating strategic directions into executable plans, delivering rigorous validation and testing, and scaling capabilities across Core and Specialty categories. This role blends strategic leadership with hands‑on mechanical engineering and program management to ensure market fit, commercial viability, and alignment with organizational objectives.

Remote Based - Eastern or Central US

• Support the Global Head of Product Innovation and GPI Category Leads in strategic directions and goals; convert GPI outcomes into actionable engineering plans, deliverables, success metrics, and governance (in partnership with GPI Product Operations).
• Drive the end‑to‑end development of new and existing physical products
  , ensuring market fit, sustainability impact, commercial viability, and compliance with standards.
• Foster a high‑performing, innovative culture across engineering, testing, product operations, Sales, Marketing, and Leadership; accelerate growth via experimentation, rapid prototyping, and data‑driven decision‑making.
• Line‑manage engineers across core and specialty categories; set clear objectives, remove impediments, resolve technical and resource escalations, and coach for performance.
• Define engineering success metrics aligned to overall GPI outcomes; monitor and report progress, risks, and course‑corrections.
• Lead the global product innovation support team and facility (IC), acting as a role model in program management of critical technical programs for product development, testing, and experimentation.
• Lead complex global engineering programs; supervise personnel and ensure on‑time delivery of diverse mechanical engineering and testing work streams.
• Grow GPI capacity in innovation—product launches, testing throughput, and external collaboration—to meet strategic demand.
• Manage and collaborate across countries; delegate effectively and contribute directly to cross‑functional teams.
• Manage and optimize budgets for Innovation Center (IC) and Product Testing Team (PTT); track spend, ROI, and value creation.
• Establish core data collection and reporting for product design and testing; ensure high‑quality technical documentation and traceability.
• Collaborate seamlessly with external engineering service providers for specialized analyses, testing, and scale‑up.
• Define robust test programs—select the right tests, sample sizes, timelines, resources, and budget requirements.

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering preferred, Master’s in Engineering beneficial.
• ~7+ years’ mechanical engineering design and analysis experience in a high‑performance product development environment with strong exposure to product testing and performance analysis
  ;
• 3+ years managing technical staff.
• Demonstrated strength in data analysis, experimental design, technical documentation, and stakeholder communication.
• Hands‑on experience with mechanical equipment
  , especially laboratory and materials testing equipment.
• Broad product design experience across materials and applications, with emphasis on plastics/composites components and assemblies; ability to evaluate material suitability based on mechanical properties.

• Design/analysis with composites and laminates
  ; packaging design.
• Product and materials regulatory experience;
  intellect…