Application Engineer

This position serves as a critical liaison between Aluminum Dynamics, LLC (ADL) and the automotive industry including OEM customers, stampers, and service centers. The role is customer-facing and technical, ensuring ADL’s automotive business aligns with the mill’s capabilities and operational goals. The ideal candidate will help position ADL as the preferred materials supplier for OEMs and contribute to the company's through-cycle profitability.

• Lead customer material qualifications and pre-source requirements in collaboration with operations, quality, and sales teams.
• Review customer inquiries and RFQs from a technical perspective, verifying property parameters, material specifications, and performing part investigations as needed.
• Regularly visit assigned customers to monitor quality performance, benchmark competition, and provide detailed feedback to Operations and Commercial teams.
• Assist ADL Field Service in addressing customer complaints, claims, corrective actions, and operational troubleshooting for quality issues.
• Provide technical support to customer manufacturing facilities, including material evaluations such as forming, bonding, welding, strain analysis, FLD analysis, circle grid analysis, and statistical evaluations.
• Coordinate and participate in customer visits, tours, audits, and certification procedures for the mill.
• Develop strong relationships with customers' manufacturing, quality, and engineering personnel.
• Collaborate with operations, sales, and product development to ensure customer satisfaction.
• Assist quality and sales teams with customer PPAP processes.
• Manage and maintain alloy, temper, thickness, and width capability tables for customer grades.
• Support development and refinement of Key Process Variables for customer grades.
• Act as a technical liaison between customer and Mill Operations, Sales, Quality, and Metallurgy.
• Support corrective actions and prepare metallurgical reports for customer issues.
• Participate in OEM and processor audits as needed.
• Contribute to product development and optimization projects.
• Certify customer parts at various production stages, including soft tool, hard tool, home-line production, and series production.
• Facilitate communication between ADL’s automotive sales team andvcustomer OEM tool shops, Tier 1 stampers/assemblers, and OEM stamping plants for trial inventory management, quality issue resolution, and non-conforming material disposition.
• Routinely participate in OEM product development and technical service/quality meetings.

Required

• Proven experience in automotive aluminum sheet supply.
• Strong written, verbal, and presentation communication skills.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• High energy, team-oriented, and relationship-driven.
• Ability to travel frequently, up to 30-40%.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams without direct reporting authority.
• Experience collaboratively supporting sales/operations personnel and automotive OEMs.
• Strong working knowledge of aluminum flat-rolled circle grid analysis.
• Experience in melting, casting, rolling, coating, and/or quality management of aluminum sheet products.
• Willingness to travel across North America and globally to OEM tooling locations.

Preferred

• Technical experience resolving issues and solving problems with ADL automotive customers and field service representatives.
• Experience working with American domestic automotive producers and Tier 1 and Tier 2 stamping partners.
• Bachelor of Science in Metallurgy, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering.

Steel Dynamics, Inc., and all affiliated entities are equal opportunity employers.