Product Development R&D Manager

We are a Hitachi Energy product group that develops and builds innovative indoor and outdoor wireless communications technologies and products used for mission-critical applications. Tropos networks are renowned for high reliability and performance, strong security and flexible scalability. We have more than 1000 customers in over 50 countries around the world. Our customers use the TropOS product series and SuprOS fleet management tool to build wireless IP broadband networks for many applications in the utility, oil and gas, mining, industrial hub and smart city markets.

We are looking for a R&D Manager to join our innovative engineering team building large scale wireless networking solutions.

More about our product:
https://www.hitachienergy.com/products-and-solutions/communication-networks/wireless-overview
 

The role is accountable for the following activities:

• Product direction:
  Creates, together with product management, product portfolio roadmaps and executes the medium to long-term strategy (3-5 years) within the product line of responsibility.
• Technology direction:
  Defines and creates technology roadmaps for software, hardware and tools and executes the medium to long-term strategy (3-5 years) within the product line of responsibility.
• Development projects:
  Plans and executed development projects (1-3 years) according to the product and technology roadmap. Development projects deliver highest quality and value of the products with sustainable speed of R&D delivery.
• Innovation and creativity:
  Develops culture and capability in the organization to ensure employees have the ability to challenge the status quo in technical issues, projects and/or processes.
• People leadership and development:
  Manages assigned resources for R&D activities, assigns tasks together with functional product line technology management to team members, and supervises workload and work allocation within the project team. Ensures appropriate competencies are developed and acquired within the team to support development of future products and systems. Ensures that the area of responsibility is properly organized, staffed, skilled and directed. Guides, motivates and develops direct and indirect employees with the support of HR processes.
• Projects, processes and tools:
  Plans and ensures an optimal project portfolio for the team. Plans capacity, people and resources for R&D projects. Oversees efficient, timely and quality project execution using the most appropriate internal and external resources and partners (e.g. universities, Corporate Research Centers (CRCs), as well as tools. Recommends, develops, and improves processes and procedures to enhance operations. Applies appropriate development and quality standards and monitors product quality and change requests to identify issues.
• Finance and budget:
  Responsible for monthly tracking, forecasting and adherence to budget. Reporting to global management monthly and/or when requested.
• Product Lifecycle:
  Plans, monitors and ensures that the lifespan for each product in the product line is fulfilled. Monitors and manages the product defect backlog and ensures that issues in the field are resolved within a reasonable time. Monitors product quality statistics and drive investigations and lessons learned and implements the resolutions in upcoming product releases.
• R&D context:
  Partners with global management, Product Management, Supply, Operations, Factory, Support line and Sales to ensure appropriate representation of needs within R&D projects. Evaluates market requirements (e.g. standardization) and innovation and provides feedback to appropriate product, manufacturing and R&D strategies. Understands technical or quality problems and provides technical support.
• Intellectual property (IP) and risk management:
  Ensures action is taken to manage risks. Supports appropriate protection of newly created intellectual property and assists in defense and enforcement activities of related technology. Supports monitoring and alerting IP issues to higher level management.

Requirements:

• Deep understanding and 4+ years of experience in
  • managing software development (embedded software and device management tools)
  • managing hardware development and new product introduction into production
• Understanding of all aspects of Software Development Life Cycle: Requirements Engineering, Development, Verification and Validation, Configuration Management in agile environment
• Knowledge of key infrastructure technologies: wireless technology, infrastructure security, networks
• Energetic and enthusiastic, passionate and creative thinker, able to translate to pragmatic solutions
• Fluent spoken and written English
• Capability to work from office at least 3 days per week