Sustainability Engineering Capability

Experience: 15 - 20 Years

We are seeking a leader to consolidate, strengthen and scale our sustainability capabilities into a cohesive, customer-facing engineering practice.

This role brings together practice development, customer engagement, technical governance, people leadership and commercial growth. The successful candidate will connect expertise that already exists across the company, shape differentiated offerings, establish consistent delivery methods, guide multidisciplinary teams and help customers respond to rapidly evolving product-compliance and sustainability requirements.

This is an opportunity to shape an important growth area with direct customer visibility and meaningful engineering impact. The right person for the job would be a credible and collaborative leader who can move comfortably between customers, engineers and executives. This leader would bring people together across organizational boundaries, create clarity from ambiguity and combine technical curiosity with commercial judgment.

Practice Charter

The Sustainability Engineering practice will focus on four connected areas:

• Product and Material Compliance: REACH, SVHC, SCIP, RoHS, restricted substances, material declarations, supplier compliance data, CDX, IMDS, California Proposition 65, Safer Consumer Products, PFAS and emerging chemical requirements.
• Carbon and Life-Cycle Engineering: Life-cycle assessment, product carbon footprints, life-cycle inventories, embodied carbon, supplier-emissions data and carbon-reduction opportunities.
• Sustainable Product Engineering and Circularity: Material substitution, lightweighting, energy efficiency, durability, repairability, reuse, remanufacturing, recycled content and end-of-life considerations.
• Sustainability Data and Digital Enablement: BOM-level traceability, integration with PLM, ERP, MES and supplier platforms, workflow automation, dashboards, analytics and audit-ready evidence management.

What You Will Lead

Practice Development

• Define the vision, service portfolio, operating model and roadmap for Sustainability Engineering.
• Identify and connect relevant expertise, customer experience, tools, methods and delivery capacity across the company.
• Convert distributed capabilities into clear, repeatable and scalable customer offerings.
• Develop methodologies, assessment frameworks, templates, quality gates, reference materials and proposal assets.
• Establish competency frameworks, training priorities, communities of practice and knowledge-sharing mechanisms.
• Build a global delivery model that brings together customer-facing leaders, domain specialists, engineers, analysts and digital teams.

Customer and Market Leadership

• Serve as the primary customer-facing leader for the Sustainability Engineering practice.
• Build trusted relationships with stakeholders across engineering, sustainability, compliance, supply chain, quality, manufacturing and executive leadership.
• Understand customer products, regulatory exposure, sustainability goals and operational constraints, and translate them into practical engineering programs.
• Lead discovery workshops, maturity assessments, solution development, proposals, technical presentations and executive reviews.
• Help customers connect product compliance and sustainability priorities with cost, risk, supply-chain resilience, product performance and business outcomes.
• Partner with business-development and account teams to create opportunities, expand customer relationships and develop repeatable market propositions.

Technical Governance and Delivery Assurance

• Establish technical methods, evidence requirements, review mechanisms, quality controls and escalation paths across the practice.
• Review and validate engineering methodologies and deliverables, including:
• BOM and component-level material analysis
• Material and substance identification
• Weight-by-weight calculations
• Supplier declarations and supporting evidence
• Regulatory thresholds and compliance conclusions
• LCA goals, scope, functional units and system boundaries
• Data quality, allocation methods and emission factors
• Product-carbon-footprint calculations and assumptions
• Challenge incomplete evidence, weak assumptions and unsupported conclusions.
• Guide teams through technically complex or ambiguous situations.
• Ensure that deliverables are consistent, traceable, configuration-controlled and supported by audit-ready evidence.
• Engage the appropriate legal, regulatory, toxicology, certification or technical specialists when additional interpretation is required.
• Lead corrective action and continuous improvement when delivery, quality or customer-confidence concerns arise.

Regulatory and Standards Leadership

• Maintain a structured view of emerging product, material, carbon, circularity and sustainability requirements.
• Assess their implications for customers, current programs and future offerings.
• Guide the practice’s response to requirements such as REACH, SCIP, RoHS, PFAS restrictions, battery and end-of-life regulations, California Proposition 65, California Safer Consumer Products requirements and relevant climate and vehicle programs.
• Promote the appropriate use of recognized frameworks, including ISO 14040, ISO 14044, ISO 14067 and GHG Protocol principles.
• Translate regulatory developments into customer conversations, delivery methods, capability requirements and new service opportunities.

People and Ecosystem Leadership

• Establish a connected network of subject-matter experts across functions, business units and geographies.
• Bring together capabilities from engineering, materials, manufacturing, supply chain, digital, software, quality and compliance.
• Coach team members, develop emerging leaders and support recruitment and deployment.
• Create a collaborative culture grounded in engineering rigor, intellectual honesty and continuous learning.
• Develop relationships with laboratories, software providers, data providers, specialist consultancies, universities and technology partners.

Commercial and Operational Leadership

• Support the practice pipeline, capability investments, staffing plans, utilization, delivery health and financial performance.
• Define appropriate delivery and commercial models for advisory, project-based and managed-service engagements.
• Establish measures for technical quality, customer satisfaction, delivery performance, capability development, revenue growth and margin.
• Develop customer case studies and referenceable outcomes while protecting confidentiality and avoiding unsupported sustainability claims.
• Identify opportunities to use digital technologies and automation to improve efficiency and scalability without compromising technical judgment or data quality.

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in engineering, materials, environmental science, sustainability or a related discipline.
• Significant experience leading engineering, product-compliance, sustainability, certification, transformation or other technically complex customer programs.
• Demonstrated success in establishing or scaling a capability, center of excellence, service line or multidisciplinary technical team.
• Strong knowledge in at least one of the following areas:
• Product and material compliance
• Carbon and life-cycle assessment
• Sustainable product engineering or circularity
• Sufficient breadth across the other practice areas to review methodologies, challenge technical work and mobilize the right specialists.
• Experience establishing technical governance, delivery methods, quality controls and performance measures.
• Strong customer-facing experience, including discovery, solution development, proposals, presentations and issue resolution.
• Proven ability to lead and influence across functions, business units, cultures and geographies.
• Commercial acumen and experience supporting business growth, resource planning and capability investments.
• Clear and persuasive communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex subjects without compromising technical accuracy.

Preferred Experience

• Experience supporting aerospace, automotive, industrial manufacturing or other regulated product industries.
• Familiarity with CDX, IMDS, PLM, ERP, supplier-compliance platforms, LCA software, emission-factor databases or sustainability-data solutions.
• Exposure to REACH, SCIP, RoHS, Proposition 65, PFAS, battery, circularity or end-of-life requirements.
• Exposure to ISO 14040, ISO 14044, ISO 14067, GHG Protocol or related sustainability frameworks.
• Experience working with laboratories, technology providers, specialist consultancies or academic institutions.
• Relevant credentials in program management, sustainability, LCA, carbon accounting, environmental management or product compliance.