*** This search is for a client of 10th St. Talent Executive Search not a portfolio company of Permanent Equity.

Position: General Manager

Location: San Diego, CA

Reporting To: Chief Executive Officer

Supervisory: 28 direct reports

Summary and Essential Duties

This challenging and rewarding position offers the right candidate the opportunity to grow with the company and report to the CEO. The General Manager (GM) will plan and oversee the daily operations of the organization to ensure goals and objectives are achieved. This individual will provide a link between the corporate holding company and the division responsible for the engineering, design, and manufacture of precision sapphire, glass, fused quartz, and fused silica products. The GM will focus on internal collaboration and culture change, operational excellence, growth strategy, operations improvement, and excellence to grow sales and profitability.

The ideal candidate has an engineering degree (mechanical, ceramic, glass), experience in leading an organization and operation focused on custom-engineered products serving the aerospace and defense industries. The right individual will be a people and values-centric leader and have the leadership and experience to enable a growth-minded, collaborative, innovation culture in the organization and is expected to achieve success with operating excellence principles, adding value in identified areas of manufacturing and technology development. This individual will establish and maintain relationships with key partners across the organization and external stakeholders.

This individual will be responsible for the management of continuous improvement and lean (supporting those actions of the Manager of Continuous Improvement) while maintaining and promoting a safe work environment. They will maintain compliance with company policy and procedure in accordance with governing laws, regulations, regulatory agencies, accreditation bodies, and company standards. They will consistently demonstrate individual and team behavior that supports the mission and strategic goals of the company. They will act as a role model for other staff. Other duties may be assigned.

Job specific duties and responsibilities

• Develop a clear and actionable strategic value creation business plan and budget with goals and objectives aligned to the strategic plan.
• Spearhead initiatives to foster a culture of collaboration and inclusivity, breaking down organizational silos and promoting cross-departmental teamwork.
• Establish metrics and KPIs to measure the success of culture change initiatives and continuously assess progress, making adjustments as necessary to ensure alignment with organizational goals and objectives.
• Lead continuous technological and operations improvements to drive increases in collaboration, sales performance, customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and EBITDA with a focus on continuous improvement.
• Ensure key monthly and quarterly reports, new project/product plans, development schedules, marketing plans, employee communications, and business and budget plans are optimized, on time, and accurate.
• Supports the sales and engineering teams in understanding the business and operations competitive/market environment and developing the company’s product portfolio to capitalize on new and existing market opportunities.
• Balance being an external, growth-focused GM with that of a strong, internal manager, including time physically walking the floor and connecting with employees.
• Recruit, retain, and reward a best-in-class business and operations team.

Competencies

• Leadership: Establishes a set of behaviors used to assist others to align collective direction, positively motivates others and is effective in executing strategic plans.
• Integrity: Do the right thing. Interacting with others in a way that gives them confidence in one’s intentions and those of the company.
• Engagement: Using appropriate interpersonal and influence styles and methods to help reach goals while considering the needs and potential contributions of others.
• Organization & Execution: Possess a keen attention to detail, ability to plan and maintains flexibility to (re)prioritize across multiple projects and competing priorities, effective time management and project management capabilities with a continuous improvement mindset.
• Civility: Treat others as you would like to be treated, with dignity and respect; remember to welcome new employees, you were new at one time too, communication with others should be positive and should never be belittling or hurtful.
• Problem Solving & Decision Making: Ability to identify and understand issues, collect and analyze information, problem-solve, and make decisions using logical reasoning, critical thinking, communication, research, data analysis and creativity.
• Interpersonal Skills: Effectively listen, speak, observe, and empathize. Understand how to communicate with different stakeholders and in different situations. Ability to use appropriate interpersonal styles to motivate team members and manage conflict.

Alignment with Values

• People: We trust, respect and empower our team members while nurturing their growth.
• Accountability: Our team members and stakeholders build trust by taking responsibility for their actions. We identify, own, and fix our mistakes.
• Committed: We are passionate and proud of our commitment to the safety, quality and professionalism of our work.
• Excellence: We strive to exceed expectations for our customers, people and community. Our customers are the only source of defining quality.
• Service Oriented: We utilize our 100+ years of experience to focus on the success of our customers, as they succeed, so will we.

Qualifications

• BS in Engineering / related field or equivalent job experience.
• Prior GM and aerospace/defense experience.
• Success leading and growing a small to mid-size business, or operations of a larger company with strong working relationships with customers and sales team, in the Specialty Materials, or a related, highly technical business.
• Decisive leadership, experience driving high performing teams. Proven ability innovating product lines, managing process and operational improvements, and influencing sales and marketing, all to build bottom line growth.
• Success growing profits in MTO business model (ability to lead and manage in a highly technical environment).
• Diverse experience set, including hands on operations and technical process and new product development.
• Understand and care about sophisticated technology and further developing its commercial use.
• Prior experience leading 20-40 individuals.
• M&A Integration experience nice to have.

Language Skills

• Ability to read, analyze, and interpret general business periodicals, professional journals, technical procedures/drawings/prints, or governmental regulations.
• Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals.
• Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from groups of other management, employees, and customers.
• Effectively communicate with people in potentially stressful situations.

Physical Demands

• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
• While performing the duties of this Job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to sit. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; use hands to fingers, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms and taste or smell. The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 25 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision.