IT Director, Product Development at Tenneco

Tenneco is one of the world’s leading designer, manufacturers and marketers of automotive products for original equipment and aftermarket customers, with approximately 78,000 team members working at more than 300 sites worldwide. Through our four business groups, Motorparts, Ride Performance, Clean Air and Powertrain, Tenneco is driving advancements in global mobility by delivering technology solutions for diversified global markets, including light vehicle, commercial truck, off-highway, industrial, motorsport and the aftermarket.

Job Title: IT Director - Product Development

Location: Skokie, Illinois or Southfield Michigan

This position is a highly visible and key leadership role with succession potential whose primary mission is to define and implement business enabling IT strategies, solutions and services for the Product Development and Engineering functions to achieve their respective objectives in support of the enterprise. The successful candidate will ensure the delivery of a portfolio of IT activities and services, maximizing service levels while reducing costs by leveraging Tenneco’s enterprise solutions. Priority for the role will be identifying ways to leverage technology to drive incremental business value. The position may be based in Skokie Illinois, or Southfield, Michigan and reports directly to the Executive Director - DRiV Applications.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Drawing on process, data, and technical expertise, works across the Product Development/Engineering teams and IT to drive digital initiatives.
• Partner with the DRiV Engineering community and our Application Managed Services provider to pro-actively support our Engineering Tools environment which supports all DRiV Engineering functions including but not limited to Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and High-Performance Computing Clusters (HPCC).
• Partner with Product Management and Engineering teams through the full product lifecycle. Employ expertise of PLM tools to help drive innovation.
• Develop and implement solutions/strategies for necessary operational efficiency by conducting research, identifying digitalization initiatives, assessing financial requirements, and modifying already existing processes.
• Work with Senior Business stakeholders to stimulate and generate high potential business opportunities for Digitalization that drive productivity, improve quality and reduce cost through business process optimization.
• Gather and analyze engineering/process data to obtain information useful to decision makers in taking key operations decision.
• Review and ensure compliance with product/information security and data privacy requirements.
• Enhance/develop processes for collecting, monitoring and cleansing data, preserving data integrity and quality on an on-going basis.
• Achieve project delivery and operational success through influence, collaboration and relationship building.
• Supervise feasibility studies and ROI for systems improvement and preparation of systems project proposals; prepare long-range systems projects/plans with priority recommendations.
• Prepare operational forecasts and requirements for information systems, systems development, and communications.
• Prepare and administer project and department budgets and report budget performance.

Education: Bachelor’s degree is required. Master’s Degree preferred.

Experience:

• 12+ years of related experience.
• Experience in the automotive industry preferred.
• Experience with the Teamcenter PLM environment preferred.
• Experience with Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems and integration with Teamcenter a plus.
• Engineering undergraduate degree is preferred.
• Strong analytical skills.
• Experience performing system development and support in an outsourced IT environment.
• Process/Methodology: Lean Engineering, Agile, Scrum, DevOps.

Travel: Requires up to 20%

Skills:

• Ability to quickly analyze complicated business problems, even if minimal information is available, and propose various options for resolution.
• Knows the business and the mission-critical technical and functional skills needed to do the job; understands various types of business propositions and understands how businesses operate in general; learns new methods and technologies easily.
• Strong technical acumen, knowledge of industry best practices, and best of breed components with engineering / design tools and processes.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain a multi-year strategic technology roadmap including build vs. buy recommendations to match business processes and plans.
• Experience working in collaboration with executive management and other IT leaders in assessing customer requests and business challenges and providing appropriate operational service levels.

Executing for Results

• Track record of successfully planning and executing complex, multi-million-dollar business / IT programs/projects.
• Has working knowledge of multiple problem-solving tools and techniques but is also able to quickly learn new ones and adapt them as needed.
• Demonstrated track record of working with high-level business and IT executives in translating business strategies into prioritized IT investments.
• Skilled at taking business requirement documents and distilling them into functional development specifications.

Leading Teams

• Is skilled at getting individuals, teams, and an entire organization to perform at a higher level and to embrace change; negotiates skillfully to achieve a fair outcome or promote a common cause; communicates a compelling vision and is committed to what needs to be done; inspires others; builds motivated, high-performing teams; understands what motivates different people.
• This position requires exceptional collaboration, teamwork, negotiation, influence, and relationship building skills at all levels with internal and external parties in alignment with our Core Values.
• Reads people accurately; can diagnose strengths, weaknesses, and potential; knows what skills are required to fill a job or role; hires the best. Recognizes and develops talent within the extended organization to “strengthen the bench” for successor.
• Exposure to multi-vendor & multi-cultural global IT delivery. Ability to manage multi-cultured teams with an appreciation and awareness of individual differences.
• Proactively develops and maintains professional relationships with peers and key business stakeholders.