R&D Manager

Role Overview

The Manager, R&D – Electronics plays a critical role in driving product innovation, formulation development, and commercialization across Chase Corporation's Electronic Materials Solutions (EMS) business. This hands-on leadership role actively supports laboratory, pilot, and manufacturing environments to develop, optimize, and scale protective electronic materials, including conformal coatings, adhesives, encapsulants, and related system-level solutions. Working cross-functionally with Sales, Marketing, Operations, Quality, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain, the Manager leads new product development, supports product commercialization, enables technology transfer into manufacturing, and aligns R&D priorities with commercial objectives. This role serves as the technical bridge between customer needs, product strategy, application requirements, and manufacturing execution.

The EMS portfolio includes protective materials serving high-reliability applications across Automotive, Aerospace, Defense, Renewable Energy, and Industrial Electronics.

Key Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & Program Execution

• Lead, mentor, and develop the R&D team; foster accountability, execution discipline, technical rigor, and innovation.
• Align R&D portfolio priorities with business strategy, customer requirements, regulatory standards, and commercial growth objectives.
• Manage new product development projects through structured stage-gate processes, including project scope, timelines, documentation, resource allocation, and execution tracking.
• Drive cross-functional coordination for pilot trials, product validation, commercialization, and technology transfer.

• Technical & Product Development

• Develop and optimize formulations and application-level solutions for electronic materials, including conformal coatings, adhesives, encapsulants, and related protective technologies.
• Translate market, customer, and application requirements into differentiated, manufacturable products.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership to accelerate innovation, improve performance, expand applications, and reduce time-to-market.
• Lead structured experimentation, validation, qualification, and testing protocols to ensure commercial viability and customer readiness.
• Support development and maintenance of technology roadmaps that connect current capabilities with future market and customer needs.

• Manufacturing & Quality Partnership

• Provide technical support across multiple manufacturing sites, including scale-up, troubleshooting, cost optimization, and process improvement.
• Collaborate with Manufacturing and Operations to ensure solutions are scalable, cost-effective, production-ready, and aligned with quality requirements.
• Ensure compliance with applicable regulatory requirements and ISO 9001 standards; support internal, external, and customer audits.
• Promote and reinforce safety standards within R&D, laboratory, pilot, and manufacturing environments.

• Strategic R&D Leadership

• Represent R&D in cross-functional business, product, and strategic planning forums.
• Partner with Marketing and Sales to translate customer needs, market insights, and application challenges into differentiated technical solutions.
• Develop and report KPIs tied to portfolio health, speed-to-market, project execution, cost performance, and innovation pipeline value.
• Identify and leverage synergies across business units to share technologies, platforms, processes, and best practices.
• Improve R&D effectiveness, execution discipline, and predictability through structured processes, prioritization, documentation, and performance tracking.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in product development, formulation development, application development, or new product introduction within electronic materials, specialty chemicals, protective coatings, adhesives, polymers, or adjacent industrial markets.

• 3+ years leading technical programs, managing R&D projects, or supervising technical staff.

• Strong background in electronic materials or related protective material technologies; experience with conformal coatings, adhesives, encapsulants, PCB assembly materials, or high-reliability electronics applications preferred.

• Experience implementing or working within structured product development processes, including stage-gate or similar project management tools.

• Strong collaboration skills with the ability to partner across R&D, Marketing, Sales, Operations, Manufacturing, Quality, and Supply Chain.

• Commercially aware technical leader with the ability to balance technical depth with business priorities, customer needs, and manufacturing realities.

• Results-oriented, hands-on leadership style with a track record of improving execution, developing technical talent, and delivering projects in fast-paced or change-oriented environments.

• Willingness to travel up to 25% to support manufacturing sites, customer engagement, technical collaboration, and product validation.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, Polymer Science, or related technical discipline required.

• Advanced degree preferred.