Midea America Corp., is one of the world’s largest home appliance brands, offering the most comprehensive selection of products in the world to fully serve the needs of day-to-day living at home, at work, or anywhere else you go. In North America we strive to aim high, put the customer first, transform and innovate the marketplace, utilizing our commitment, dedication, inclusion, and partnership with our teams. Midea America is a subsidiary of the Midea Group, a global company with over 150,000 employees and operations in more than 195 countries. As a publicly listed company, we are ranked #245 as a Fortune Global 500 company and offer one of the most comprehensive product portfolios in the industry.
This full-time position leads Residential HVAC R&D activities for both unitary and ductless product categories, with responsibility for product strategy, technology roadmaps, innovation development, and support of new product programs. The Engineering Director oversees multidisciplinary engineering functions including product design, regulatory compliance, advanced research integration, and industrial design, and ensures cohesive and timely delivery throughout the development lifecycle. This role drives long-term architecture planning, competitive benchmarking, and early-stage concept validation in order to position the portfolio for future growth. The Director also serves as the primary technical interface to global R&D partners and cross-functional teams in sales, marketing, quality, product safety, IoT, and consumer insights, fostering alignment across these teams. Domestic and international travel is required to support customers, drive collaboration, and ensure product launch readiness.
Essential Job Responsibilities:
- Lead and oversee the residential HVAC R&D team across product design, regulatory, and industrial design functions, ensuring coordinated execution between team members located in the Louisville, KY and Plano, TX offices.
- Lead the end-to-end development process for new products and innovations, translating market requirements into defined concepts and driving refinement through early-stage validation
- Be the primary owner of the technology and product roadmaps for these categories of products, ensuring alignment with business strategy, regulatory requirements, and customer needs
- Drive ongoing competitive intelligence efforts, including trends, performance comparisons, and analysis of competitor products, technology, and marketing claims
- Work with the advanced research team to drive innovation strategy and pull new ideas into the roadmaps
- Collaborate with quality, product safety, IoT and consumer insights resources throughout the product planning and launch processes
- Manage weekly R&D calls with international team – tracking action items, assigning duties, etc.
- Lead customer-facing discussions to identify product gaps, performance expectations, and specification requirements, and drive alignment of the engineering team around a focused product strategy
- Ability to travel domestically & internationally
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering or related field
- 8+ years’ experience in HVAC product design and development
- Proven leadership experience managing engineers
- Experience leading product development cycle from customer requirements to launch
- Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate with technical teams & mentor engineers
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to organize/execute a strategy
- Goal-oriented & self-managed
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master’s degree in engineering or MBA
- History of working with global colleagues
