President, Detroit Thermal Systems

Responsibilities

• Serve as the senior business leader with full accountability for business continuity, operating performance, customer confidence, and financial results.
• Lead the stabilization agenda by assessing current-state performance, organizational risk, leadership gaps, and execution barriers; translate findings into a focused recovery plan.
• Establish clear priorities, decision rights, escalation paths, and governance routines to support rapid stabilization and aligned execution.
• Direct the business to achieve targets for safety, quality, delivery, cost, inventory, labor efficiency, and launch readiness.
• Lead coordinated actions to protect customer performance and recover quickly from disruptions, misses, or escalations.
• Drive operating discipline across production, materials, engineering, maintenance, quality, and support functions.
• Advance operational excellence through standardization, continuous improvement, waste reduction, and process optimization.
• Develop go-to-market growth strategies for contract manufacturing and new business growth.
• Move the organization from reactive problem-solving to disciplined management routines and sustainable performance.
• Own full P&L performance, including revenue, margins, conversion, labor efficiency, inventory, capital discipline, and cash management.
• Partner with Finance to improve forecast accuracy, cost visibility, profitability analysis, and corrective-action tracking.
• Support commercial health in partnership with Sales and Program Management, especially where pricing, sourcing, launch, or customer recovery issues affect performance.
• Balance urgent recovery actions with medium-term business viability and disciplined investment choices.
• Establish and maintain effective business controls, continuity planning, and leadership governance during periods of transition or instability.
• Partner with Finance, HR, IT, Legal, and Quality to safeguard business assets, secure key decisions, and reduce operational and compliance risk.
• Escalate critical issues early and ensure timely intervention when performance, people stability, or stakeholder trust is at risk.
• Serve as the senior business point of alignment with executive leadership on status, risks, priorities, and support needs.
• Align Operations, Program Management, Commercial, Finance, HR, IT, Supply Chain, Engineering, Quality, and Manufacturing functions around shared business priorities and measurable results.
• Remove silos, improve decision quality, and reinforce clear accountability across the leadership team.
• Ensure leaders understand both functional responsibilities and enterprise implications of their decisions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required; Engineering, Operations, Business, Supply Chain, Finance, or related field preferred. Master’s degree or MBA preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in manufacturing, automotive, or similarly complex industrial environments.
• Significant experience leading a plant, site, business unit, or multifunctional operating environment with direct accountability for results.
• Prior scalation, restructuring, transformation, or recovery leadership experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated success leading across operations, engineering, quality, supply chain, finance, commercial, and people leadership.
• Strong financial and operational acumen, including P&L responsibility and performance-management discipline.
• Experience in customer-facing leadership and high-pressure stakeholder environments.
• Labor relations / union experience preferred.
• Proven ability to build leadership credibility quickly, make sound decisions under ambiguity, and sustain execution under pressure.

Key Competencies

• Holds self and others accountable to meet commitments.
• Drives Results Consistently achieves results, even under tough circumstances.
• Makes good and timely decisions that keep the organization moving forward.
• Makes sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems.
• Plans and prioritizes work to meet commitments aligned with organizational goals.
• Knows the most effective and efficient processes to get things done, with a focus on continuous improvement.
• Sees ahead to future possibilities and translates them into breakthrough strategies.
• Antspects and balances the needs of multiple stakeholders.
• Balances Stakeholders Anticipates and balances the needs of multiple stakeholders.
• Builds strong customer relationships and delivers customer-centric solutions.
• Instills Trust Gains the confidence and trust of others through honesty and authenticity.
• Courage Steps up to address difficult issues and says what needs to be said.
• Situational Adaptability Adapts approach and demeanor in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations.
• Develops Talent Develops people to meet both their career goals and the organization’s goals.
• Action Oriented Takes on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy, and enthusiasm.
• Secures and deploys resources effectively and efficiently.

Preferred Candidate Profile

• An executive-caliber operator who can stabilize a business in disruption without creating unnecessary noise.
• A leader who can restore confidence with customers, executives, partners, and internal teams through visible ownership and reliable execution.
• A cross-functional business leader who understands operations deeply but can also integrate finance, commercial, quality, engineering, supply chain, HR, and IT priorities.
• A leader who can distinguish structural issues from execution failures and make difficult talent, pace, and resource decisions with sound judgment.
• A builder of management discipline who can move the organization from firefighting to standard work, governance, and sustained accountability.
• A coach and culture leader who develops successors, strengthens the leadership bench, and leaves the business stronger than they found it.
• An experienced leader with demonstrated product design and validation skills to guide the organization through the transition away from the JV and to support business growth and transformation.
• A strong leader driving direct engagement with customers and design/validation partners to set product direction, manage technical risk, and enable scalable growth.