Global Product Engineering Director

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.

• Drive the engineering lifecycle for new and existing physical products, ensuring robust design, testing, validation, and technical delivery.
• Translate strategic product innovation priorities into clear engineering roadmaps, plans, and work streams aligned with organisational outcomes.
• Lead global engineering teams across product categories, providing coaching, direction, and support to deliver consistently high‑quality outputs.
• Oversee global testing and experimentation activities, ensuring appropriate test design, accurate data collection, and rigorous technical analysis.
• Manage escalations related to technical decisions, resource constraints, and operational challenges, ensuring continuity and delivery of engineering programmes.
• Partner with commercial, marketing, operations, and strategy teams to deliver customer‑focused solutions and support collaborative innovation projects.
• Manage engineering budgets, optimising utilisation of internal resources and external partners, including suppliers, consultancies, and test facilities.
• Strengthen engineering governance by defining success metrics, ensuring high‑quality reporting, and promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams and regions.

Scope
:
Global: 45 Countries; CHEP and Brambles – all business units;
Pallets, Totes, Containers, Auto,

New and Durability and Digital

Lead the global product engineering function within GPI—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.

• Strategic alignment & planning: 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).
• Lifecycle ownership: Drive the end‑to‑end development of new and existing physical products
  , ensuring market fit, sustainability impact, commercial viability, and compliance with standards.
• Innovation & collaboration: 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.
• Engineering leadership: Line‑manage engineers across Core and Specialty categories; set clear objectives, remove impediments, resolve technical and resource escalations, and coach for performance.
• Metrics & performance: Define engineering success metrics aligned to overall GPI outcomes; monitor and report progress, risks, and course‑corrections.
• Program & facility leadership: 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.
• Global programs & delivery: Lead complex global engineering programs; supervise personnel and ensure on‑time delivery of diverse mechanical engineering and testing work streams.
• Capacity expansion: Grow GPI capacity in innovation—product launches, testing…