Technical Manager, Vinyl

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

Job Description

This role leads the technical engine for the Vinyl business segment, bringing together core R&D, product development, technical service, process support, and customer support to deliver business results. As a member of the business team, this leader sets technical priorities, aligns department goals with business strategy, and ensures resources are focused on the work that matters most. The role provides clear direction to technical teams, supports customers through complex issues, and drives product development from concept through scale-up and manufacturing. Success requires strong ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to solve technically complex problems while keeping safety, quality, budget, regulatory needs, and business impact in focus.

Responsibilities

• Represent Technical function on the business team, partnering with the Business Manager to align technical priorities with strategic goals of vinyl business and foster strong relationships with strategic customers, suppliers, and other external partners.
• Lead Product development, technical service, and core R&D activities by setting clear objectives, priorities, and expectations for execution, collaboration, and performance.
• Direct team activities to ensure product development, technical service, and core R&D work is completed on time and deliver measurable business impact.
• Lead resolution of complex customer technical issues by challenging chosen pathways and applying strong judgment, analytical thinking, and cross-functional collaboration; create or adapt policies, procedures, and precedents when complex problems require new solutions.
• Coordinate product scale-up and ensure new products are ready for effective, reliable manufacturing.
• Establish, maintain, and use systems and dashboards to track and analyze technical performance indicators, identify trends and gaps, and implement improvements that strengthen capability, responsiveness, and reliability.
• Stay current on exploration of new material technologies, relevant AI tools and methods, emerging applications and processes, competitive activity, and intellectual property trends; use those insights to identify practical opportunities for innovation, technical problem-solving, and business growth.
• Manage, coach, and develop department employees, ensure fair and consistent people practices, including performance evaluations, promotions, salary adjustments, hiring support, disciplinary actions, project assignments, and day-to-day accountability.
• Partner closely with Regulatory to manage product safety and regulatory issues, while supporting intellectual property management for the business segment.
• Ensure company safety procedures are followed and own budget responsibilities for the department.
• Identify and plan department resources, including personnel, equipment capabilities, and support needed to meet business and technical goals.
• Communicate timely, relevant updates to internal teams, leadership, and external stakeholders on customer trends, project progress, technical priorities, KPIs and group performance.
• This description is a summary of principal responsibilities and is not intended to include all duties that may be assigned.

Skills

• Technical Domain Expertise – Ability to understand and apply the core technical principles relevant to Vinyl and HFFR compounds, including polymer chemistry, formulation science, compounding, extrusion, molding, additives, structure-property relationships, raw materials, and processing technologies
• Technical Judgment & Problem Solving - Ability to evaluate complex technical challenges, question assumptions, and make sound engineering decisions by applying expertise in product performance, material behavior, processing, testing, manufacturing constraints, regulatory requirements, and customer applications, even when information is incomplete or ambiguous.
• Technical portfolio and priority management - Ability to assess, prioritize, and balance core R&D, product development, technical service, process support, customer issue resolution, and longer-term innovation work based on business impact, urgency, resource availability, and strategic fit.
• Coaching and development of technical talent - Ability to coach chemists, engineers, and other technical staff by strengthening their problem-solving methods, technical rigor, project execution, customer orientation, documentation quality, and decision-making capability.
• Ability to guide product development teams through opportunity stage-gate discipline, technical reviews, risk assessments, customer validation, scale-up readiness, and commercialization decisions to ensure projects are technically sound and business-relevant
• Internal and External Technical Communication - Ability to represent the company and the technical team professionally with customers and internal stakeholders to build trusted relationships. Communicate clearly up, down, and across the organization to align priorities, explain technical issues, escalate risks, and drive timely execution.
• AI-Enabled Technical Problem Solving - Ability to lead the practical adoption of AI tools, models, and agents to accelerate technical brainstorming, improve problem-solving speed and accuracy, strengthen decision-making, and raise the team’s overall effectiveness.

Education and Work Experience Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in plastics, polymers, chemical manufacturing, compounding, materials engineering, product development, technical service, raw material management, or a related technical function preferred.
• Position requires 5+ years of technical management experience in plastics, polymers, compounding, materials engineering, product development, or a related technical function.
• Position requires strong leadership abilities to manage various elements of the business from a technical perspective.
• Bachelor's degree in Polymer Science, Materials Science, Polymer/Plastics Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or related field. A master’s degree or higher is preferred.

This description is a summary of principal responsibilities and is not intended to include all duties that may be assigned.

Teknor Apex is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any protected status under state or federal laws. Must be 18 years of age or older to work at Teknor Apex.