Hardware Customer Support Manager

**Job Description Summary**: The Grid Automation Center of Excellence (CoE) is responsible for the overall after sales support process and function at GA level and the global center of excellence team at PL level, to develop best practices on Customer Support, and lead the Product Lines to achieve strategic objectives defined for GA business.

The CoE Hardware Customer Support leader will own the hardware support at CoE level and provide support to GA regional units to investigate and answer customer requests and complaints.

You will lead and motivate CoE Hardware support engineers in multiple locations, collaborating with the Regions, Global Supply Chain, Quality, Product Management and R&D teams as required to solve customer requests and achieve strategic objectives defined for GA.

The Hardware Customer Support Leader demonstrates leadership in communicating and driving business goals, programs, and processes for an area or business segment. You are specialized in grid automation and is fully engaged in the primary function of the Hardware & Support team, namely the Level 3 (L3) technical support to GA Regions, Product Management and R&D. You have functional management responsibility for the resources assigned to the team. You will demonstrate technical leadership, mentoring capability and the ability to keep up with evolving hardware technologies in the grid automation domain. In this role, you will utilize your experience or expertise to solve problems, develop and execute objectives for self and team, and possess the ability to effect short-term and some long-term business goals. #LI-ML2

**Essential Responsibilities**
- Advanced technical support on all GA PAC products, covering both pre-sales and post-sales tasks.
- Track and manage team performance based on agreed KPI’s.
- Resolve customer requests and complaints (LSN/ACT) related to Hardware investigations and prepare necessary customer communication such as Customer Technical reports (Internal and external).
- Participate in Customer meetings or Site visits to gather evidence or troubleshoot site issues, lead task-forces on strategic project.
- Create test setups and conduct tests specific to issue resolution, workarounds or Root Cause Analysis activities
- Drive hardware defect investigations to conclusion and develop permanent solutions in collaboration with R&D or other relevant teams.
- Guide and support the Global Repairs team in more complex investigations
- Interface with various Quality teams (Regional quality, Manufacturing quality, Supplier quality etc.) as necessary. Support PQIM activities; Investigate systemic component defects.
- Develop and tune portfolio; prepare Notes and guidance documents to drive sales and facilitate Grid Automation (GA) projects.
- Lead and support demanding product homologation; in some cases, even perform the homologation tests.
- Contribute to specific customer events such as regional roadshows, or in-depth product training, pilot projects.
- Collaboration with R&D: contribute to product roadmap as required, eg. validation of new products and product evolutions.
- Maintain broad awareness of GA efforts to assure technical quality excellence, timely completion of work and reviews, appropriate use of resources, and responsiveness to customer needs.
- Technical leadership in power systems protection
- Participate in industry committees and influence evolution of strategic technologies.
- Conduct team performance appraisals and salary planning.
- Promote professional growth through timely performance feedback, coaching and counseling.
- Ensure company compliance initiatives and training requirements are implemented within the group.
- Proficiency with presenting and demonstrating technology solutions to customers.
- Perform all activities, especially in Lab areas, in compliance with the Site health and safety guidelines.

**Required Qualifications**
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering
- Minimum of 7 years in grid solutions industry
- Ability and willingness to travel (globally) up to 25% of time.

Eligibility

**Desired Characteristics**
- Fluent in English; an additional language will be a plus (Spanish, French, German, Portuguese etc.)
- Proven experience of leading technical project execution in grid automation portfolios
- Proven mentoring and coaching abilities, demonstrated ability to motivate & inspire others
- Excellent written/oral communication and interpersonal skills, customer focused, enthusiastic
- Demonstrated strategic awareness combined with tactical implementation capability.
- Excellent analytical skills with ability to identify and explain critical issues. Six sigma/lean
- Must be able to handle multiple projects simultaneously, requires discretion and independent judgment, and the ability to maintain a good working relationship with all co-workers, stakeholders and clients

**We deliver integrated project solutions to enable large scale electrification and support our customer n