Program Manager - Gas Delivery

At Watlow’s Global Headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, we combine a rich legacy with forward-thinking innovation. Founded in 1922 in the heart of St. Louis, Watlow has grown from a small heating element manufacturer into a global leader in thermal systems. Our headquarters is more than just an office, it’s a hub for collaboration, advanced engineering, and customer focused solutions.

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We are hiring a: Program Manager- Gas Delivery

St. Louis, MO

Watlow is seeking a transformation Program Manager to join our Gas Delivery Platform organization in a highly visible role with a clear mandate: cut our front-end cycle time for modified standard products and make Watlow the easiest gas delivery supplier in the industry to start a new project with. In this position you will own the entire quote-to-proto-to-HVM flow as a single, governed value stream, from customer requirement capture through configured quote, design, prototype, and release.

You will be responsible for driving results by orchestrating a cross-functional value stream you do not directly control, working through SLAs, governance, and executive sponsorship rather than command over every function. If you have led a real engineered-to-order to configure-to-order transformation with numbers to prove it, know how to build configuration logic and automation as the business owner, and want the opportunity to build a new discipline from the ground up, we would love to connect with you.

What You’ll Do:

• Value Stream Ownership: Own the global front-end value stream for modified standard and configurable products end to end, from customer requirement capture through configured quote, design, prototype, and HVM release.
• Cycle-Time Transformation: Drive the total front-end clock from 60 days to under 15 by advancing the automation program, the configuration architecture, and the customer approval model together, not in isolation.
• Configuration Architecture: Define and own the standard, configured, custom, and decline gate along with the customization selector logic that makes automation possible.
• Automation Program: Own the scope and sequence of the automation program, including configured quoting, design automation, and prototype capability build-out across sites.
• SLA & Performance Governance: Author step-level service agreements with each process owner and run the monthly scorecard that serves as the single source of truth for front-end performance.
• Customer Approval Model: Partner with major account teams to redesign the customer approval and review loops that make up roughly half of today’s cycle time, without damaging the relationship.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Shape the org design of quoting, applications engineering, and design functions, and guide the design capacity glidepath as automation reduces manual effort.
• Executive Alignment: Partner with senior leaders and your executive sponsor to secure buy-in, resolve escalations, and keep the transformation on track inside a hard matrix.

What you´ll need to succeed?

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related field
• 8+ years leading configure-to-order or quote-to-delivery cycle-time transformations in industrial or manufacturing environments
• Proven ability to own a cross-functional value stream without owning the underlying functions, delivering through SLAs, cadence, and executive sponsorship in a matrixed organization
• Experience building or product-owning configuration logic, CPQ, or design automation as the business owner, not the IT implementer
• Technical fluency strong enough to credibly challenge product architecture decisions with engineers and product managers
• Executive presence that holds up with demanding, technically sophisticated customers
• Global operating experience across both low-cost and technical centers

Preferred Qualifications:

• Background in an industrial business that sells configured products through a selector or CPQ at scale
• Experience in semiconductor capital equipment or another high-mix, low-volume, components-or-subsystems environment
• AI-fluent and hands-on, with experience building and deploying tools, workflows, or agents that compress cycle time
• Track record of building a selector or configurator that the sales organization actually adopted
• Experience removing approval steps from a demanding customer’s process without damaging the relationship