Manufacturing R&D Teams Manager at Commonwealth Center For Advanced Manufacturing – Disputanta, Virginia

Summary of the Role

At CCAM, we are committed to creating meaningful impacts for our partners to ensure their success, which in turn supports the sustainability and growth of CCAM. This is accomplished by fostering a culture rooted in purposeful and comprehensive collaboration and communication, superior technical proficiency, integrity, and team-driven performance. The Manufacturing R&D Teams Manager holds a critical role in this mission, leading multiple teams of subject matter experts within manufacturing technology disciplines as they work to solve manufacturing challenges. This position serves as a coach, mentor, and advocate, developing a high-performance environment where individuals and teams excel and align their efforts with CCAM’s strategic goals.

High performance at CCAM involves nurturing a purpose-driven, collaborative, and learning-oriented culture that integrates strong technical capabilities with partner requirements to reliably deliver excellent, well-managed projects. This ensures meaningful impact, builds enduring partnerships, and secures CCAM's growth, sustainability, and reputation. By leading and advancing the teams that execute well-planned, partner-focused projects, the Manufacturing R&D Teams Manager will propel CCAM's growth, foster trust, and ensure long-term success.

Key Responsibilities

Supervise Teams and Team Members

• Supervise technical staff, including Engineers and Technologists, providing guidance and support to foster a productive work environment and achieve organizational goals.
• Manage individual employee performance, including setting individual goals to meet organizational objectives, conducting regular evaluations, providing constructive feedback, and guiding development plans.
• Mentor and coach team members to continuously grow their effectiveness, technical and professional skills, and support their further career progression.
• Facilitate personnel growth, development, and training opportunities.
• Foster a positive team culture that values collaboration, respect, and accountability.
• Collaborate with HR to recruit top talent aligned with organizational goals.

Deliver Quality

• Provide technical & program leadership as needed for key efforts that have higher priority, risk, or potential impact. Provide oversight and guidance to technical leads on projects to ensure delivery of high quality and impact for stakeholders.
• Support the delivery of quality outcomes produced by the team, including project deliverables, proposals/quotes, strategy inputs, etc.
• Provide coaching and feedback to team members to ensure that content is delivered accurately, effectively, and in a refreshing, customer-focused manner.
• Ensure that the teams and organization have sufficient capability, processes, and tools to deliver quality outcomes effectively.

Manage Resources

• Work with peers, Project Managers, Principal Investigators, and Leadership to ensure appropriate allocation of resources to projects and tasks.
• Manage team billing forecasts and monitor utilization to ensure efficient resource allocation.
• Forecast resource needs to align with project demands and organizational objectives.
• Conduct capacity and skill assessments to inform resource planning.
• Define equipment, laboratory, and work area ownership, including ensuring that operations, maintenance, safety, and cleanliness are documented, understood, & implemented effectively.
• Oversee maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and utilization of equipment, software, and other technical capabilities.
• Provide regular reporting to the R&D group and leadership team on progress, challenges, and achievements.

Generate Revenue

• Ensure delivery of revenue through strong project execution, ensure targets are met through the utilization of staff and equipment resources.
• Manage budgets, providing purchasing support as needed.

Key Support Activities

• Provide support for partner success initiatives, particularly in partner relationship management activities.
• Partner with Leadership and program leads to continuously refine and grow the organization’s strategy direction and ensure implementation of that strategy in day-to-day operations.
• Support financial analysis and forecasting.
• Assist in identifying and creating content for the organization's website, marketing materials, monthly newsletter, and capability descriptions to promote research initiatives.
• Implement strategies to protect and leverage intellectual property, including patent submission and publication.

CCAM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. CCAM does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.

Organization

Company Overview

CCAM is the center of an ecosystem of collaboration with industry, government, and academia that is focused on helping manufacturers solve real world problems. CCAM works with its partners to develop and deploy new technologies that advance manufacturing and deliver business value. For many companies, joining CCAM can be the difference between being in front of new technology or behind the curve.

Our research focuses on building intelligence in manufacturing processes and systems by bringing experienced, multi-disciplinary teams together with advanced digital systems and manufacturing process capabilities as well as new technology to solve industrial challenges. Whether through new process development, process improvement, new technology development and insertion, system integration and automation, or advanced analytics and AI development, our teams deliver real, usable results. Active research threads include flexible and distributed manufacturing, adaptive automation, cooperative processing, advanced coatings systems, and intelligent repair and replacement through new technologies.

As an applied research center, CCAM has a very strong, multi-disciplinary resident staff that includes research scientists and engineers, skilled industrial technologists, university faculty, engineering interns and graduate students. These teams work collaboratively with one another as well as with partner organizations to build new and effective approaches to challenges. Our teammates are highly skilled and innovative problem solvers that are focused on delivering value to our customers every day.

Benefits

• Health, Dental, Vision insurance plan options; eligible on first of month following date of hire.
• HRA – Health Reimbursement Account (employer funded, covers a portion of the medical deductible)
• FSA – Flexible spending Account (employee funded, pre-tax)
• 401k Retirement Plan – Employer contributes 3% of base salary monthly; additional discretionary match up to 7.5% determined annually.
• Life, Accidental Death & Dismemberment, Short Term Disability, and Long-Term Disability insurance (employer funded)
• 3 weeks paid vacation.
• 2 weeks paid maternity/paternity/adoption leave.
• Tuition Reimbursement up to $5,250 per year.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Manufacturing/Industrial Engineering, Material Science/Engineering, or relevant technical field.
• 5+ years of experience directly managing technical personnel in applied R&D, technology development, manufacturing process and/or product development, or similar.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Strong experience mentoring and coaching technical personnel to achieve high performance.
• Team-oriented mindset, focused on ensuring that individual growth and development are synergistic with organizational goals and performance requirements.
• Demonstrated ability in recruiting, hiring, and managing technical personnel.
• Demonstrated ability to understand customer challenges, communicate effectively about them, and convert them into plans that can resolve those challenges.
• This position requires access to technology or intellectual property that is subject to US government CUI, ITAR, and/or export control requirements. Candidates must be qualified for such access without an export license.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in a manufacturing-related engineering discipline, such as Materials Science/Engineering, Computer Engineering, Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or similar.
• 12+ years of experience directly managing technical personnel in applied R&D, technology development, manufacturing process and/or product development, or similar.
• Experience maturing technology from early-stage concepts (low readiness level) to implementable solutions (high readiness level) for manufacturing.
• Proven experience supervising engineers and technologists in the performance of applied research and development for manufacturing.
• Experience in personnel development and training programs.
• Proficiency in resource management and financial forecasting.
• Demonstrated success in stakeholder or customer relationship management.
• Familiarity with managing manufacturing research facilities and equipment, including experience with safety, facilities management, and compliance procedures.?

Individual Traits Key to Success at CCAM

• Approaches work with a collaborative, team-first mentality; positive, proactive, with a can-do attitude.
• Genuine enthusiasm for the application of research to manufacturing processes.
• Excels at problem definition; able to work effectively with open ended or ambiguous problems and/or applications.
• Self-driven and results-oriented, with a clear focus on high quality work performance
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, conveys ideas at both technical and non-technical levels; must be a good listener.
• Responsible and accountable; able to manage time, cost, and quality to meet project goals.
• Eager to gain new experience and learn new skills.