Supervisor - Project Engineering, Systems

The Supervisor, Engineering role is part of an initiative to develop MDA’s future leaders from within. Each placement will be for a 2-year term allowing for the opportunity to explore the management career path and to develop leadership skills. Employees would then have the option to continue on the management path or return to the technical path. 

The Supervisor, Engineering is a member of the leadership team and reports to the Manager, Engineering. The supervisor manages project engineers across all the engineering disciplines, through developing and maintaining a workforce with the key technical skills necessary to ensure proper execution and delivery of the company’s products and projects. The Supervisor will manage recruitment, development, engagement and retention, and succession planning within their team.  

In addition, the incumbent will support the Manager, Engineering with other aspects of the full departmental activities such as technological roadmap development, continuous improvement, modernization of engineering practices, and customer satisfaction. They will support the adoption of next-generation engineering tools, techniques, and procedures to increase competitiveness in their discipline area.

Specific Tasks

Resource Management:

• Recruits employees, assigns, directs and evaluates their work. Monitors and manages overall employee performance, conducts annual performance appraisals and sets individual objectives
• Provides staffing expertise to support the project engineering demand of Programs, R&D, and Business Development. Ensures that staffing supports the demand of current and future MDA programs
• Develops staff to ensure necessary skill sets. Establishes and regularly updates succession plans for key skills to avoid single point failures and bottlenecks in resource allocation
• Ensures group competency remains abreast of state of the art techniques and skills in Project Engineering
• Ensures staff works in an environment fostering innovation and evolution to maximize their satisfaction within the constraints of the business, supporting career planning, providing regular feedbacks and celebrating successes
• Supports management of departmental overhead budget within allocation and provides forecasts to finance as required
• Supports coordination of capital planning for the department. Proposes necessary capital investment items with proper financial justification and implements the procurement
• Ensures the proper application of the company’s collective agreements

Technical overview:

• Coordinates and ensures distribution of lessons learned among team
• Supports internal and external audits and ensure corrective actions are implemented as required
• Promotes a culture of planning, designing and building to budget and scope
• Participates in or leads technical troubleshooting and problem solving

Process development, maintenance and application:

• Ensures proper application and adherence to overall company policies and processes by staff in the department
• Supports development and maintenance of departmental specific policies, processes, work instructions and standards and ensures they are available to, and followed by staff
• Proposes and leads new initiatives, or participates in initiatives for business process improvement (BPI) to improve departmental or global efficiency
• Acts as the area owner and ensures all Health & Safety procedures and policies are adhered to and maintained

Front End of the Business:

• Provides support and participate in proposal activities
• Makes recommendations to the product development organization for new products and R&D initiatives in line with the company’s strategic direction
• Supports and coordinates patent applications in conjunction with the product development organization
• Ensures that the company’s trade secrets and proprietary information is protected and handled securely

Performs other tasks as required such as; leading proposals at the front end of the business, managing small projects or parts thereof, providing support to subcontract management, participating in collective agreement negotiations.

Work experience requirements

• Currently an engineering employee of MDA
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in the field of engineering and project engineer, preferably in the space industry or related area
• Candidate must have demonstrated superior ability for people skills, conflict resolution and leadership skills
• Career aspirations to managing teams of people in a dynamic environment
• Experience or interest in developing skills in resource management, program management, negotiations, risk management techniques and financial reporting

Education requirements

Engineering or similar degree in an appropriate discipline, Bachelors or higher

Comments/Special Considerations:

Successful candidates must obtain and hold security clearance at the reliability status level, and pass security assessment for the Controlled Goods Program (CGP).