Overview
When Alfred Fain founded a small Rhode Island tire store in 1924, at the time no one could have predicted how Teknor Apex would become an international custom compounder sought out by companies around the world. After a nearly hundred-year journey that’s carried us through acquisitions and expansion, we now have nine U.S. locations, as well as operations in Belgium, Singapore, Germany, and China.
Throughout this global expansion Teknor has remained a privately held company, and today Fain’s grandson sits at the helm, maintaining the family’s tradition of fostering deep employee and customer relationships. These relationships are what allow us—together—to deliver customized compound solutions and help our customer’s create better products.
“Manufacturing is a team sport, and we work together to achieve our goals.” ~Jon Fain
Teknor Apex is a global provider of compounding solutions, driven by technical expertise, customer focus, innovation, partnership, sustainability, and integrity. With operations across North America, Europe, and Asia, we bring together global talent and capabilities to deliver customized solutions for customers worldwide.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
The Senior Manufacturing Solutions Engineer is responsible for designing, developing, implementing, and supporting software solutions that improve business processes, manufacturing operations, quality systems, supply chain performance, and operational efficiency across the organization. This role serves as both a technical leader and hands-on developer, partnering with stakeholders throughout the business to identify opportunities and deliver innovative software solutions that drive measurable value. Our Ops Excellence software function is in active transition, moving from traditional application development toward agentic programming, where AI agents plan, generate, test, and help maintain significant portions of our software under engineer direction, and this role will be central to that shift.
The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering expertise with an understanding of industrial and manufacturing environments needs, enabling them to translate operational challenges into scalable digital solutions from beginning to end. Just as important, the ideal candidate is genuinely energized by the leading edge of agentic AI development tools, comfortable directing and reviewing AI-generated code, and eager to help redefine how our team builds and ships software going forward.
- Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain custom software applications supporting manufacturing and business operations.
- Lead the architecture and technical design of enterprise applications, integrations, and data solutions.
- Develop web, desktop, mobile, cloud, and API-based solutions as required by business needs.
- Adopt and champion agentic programming practices, using AI coding agents to plan, generate, test, and refactor code, while retaining accountability for architecture, correctness, and quality of the delivered solution.
- Design and orchestrate AI agent workflows (e.g., via API, MCP servers, and related tooling) to automate development tasks, manufacturing data workflows, and operational reporting.
- Establish software development standards, coding practices, and documentation requirements, including guardrails and review practices specific to agent-generated code.
- Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with company technology strategies.
- Partner with Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Engineering, Finance, and other business functions to identify opportunities for digital transformation.
- Develop and support integrations between ERP, MES, quality, warehouse, and production systems.
- Serve as the technical lead for software development projects and mentor developers and analysts.
- Design and develop data solutions, dashboards, reporting tools, and analytics platforms.
- Manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Establish documentation standards, knowledge transfer processes, and application support models that reduce key-person dependency and improve long-term supportability of internally developed software.
- Evaluate emerging technologies, software platforms, frameworks, and development tools—with particular focus on AI coding agents, LLM APIs, and agentic development frameworks—using established architectural standards to support current and future business objectives.
- Manage technical debt by proactively identifying opportunities to improve application architecture, performance, maintainability, and long-term sustainability.
- Lead secure application design and governance for integrations with enterprise systems, cloud platforms, external AI services, and third-party technologies while ensuring compliance with cybersecurity and data governance standards.
- Establish and enforce software engineering standards, coding practices, development methodologies, documentation requirements, code review processes, and quality expectations across all internally developed applications.
- Govern the software development lifecycle, including source control, versioning, release management, deployment practices, and change governance to ensure reliable and repeatable software delivery.
Education and/or Work Experience Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
- 5+ years of software development experience.
- Experience designing and developing enterprise software applications.
- Strong proficiency in C#, .NET, Python, Java, JavaScript, or TypeScript.
- Hands-on experience with, or strong interest in quickly developing expertise in, AI coding agents and LLM-assisted development (e.g., Codex, Claude Code, Copilot, or similar tools).
- Experience with SQL databases, REST APIs, and system integrations.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
- Ability to multitask and prioritize effectively
- Positive attitude and team-oriented mindset
Work Schedule & Pay
- Typical schedule: Monday–Friday, standard business hours
- Compensation based on experience and qualifications
- Travel Required ( up to 20%)
Preferred Skills
- Experience in manufacturing, industrial, or process-driven environments.
- Experience integrating ERP, MES, CRM, or enterprise systems.
- Experience with Microsoft Azure or AWS cloud platforms.
- Experience with Power Platform, Power BI, or low-code development tools.
- Experience with agentic programming, AI coding agents, LLM APIs (e.g., Claude/Anthropic API), MCP-based tool integrations, machine learning, automation, or advanced analytics.
- Experience with industrial protocols, IoT technologies, or operational technology environments.
- Experience leading technical teams or mentoring developers.
- Preferred experience with Inductive Automation Ignition platform, including application development, visualization, SCADA/MES integration, scripting, and industrial data solutions.
Physical Requirements:
- Ability to safely and successfully perform the essential job functions consistent with the ADA, FMLA and other federal, state and local standards, including meeting qualitative and/or quantitative productivity standards.
- Ability to maintain regular, punctual attendance consistent with the ADA, FMLA and other federal, state and local standards
- Must be able to lift and carry up to 25 lbs
- Ability to sit and work at a computer for extended periods
- Must be able to talk, listen and speak clearly on telephone
Work Life Balance Eligibility:
On-site
This description is a summary of principal responsibilities and is not intended to include all duties that may be assigned.