Vice President, Global Product Platforms & Innovation
Job Description
As a part of the global industrial organization Marmon Holdings—which is backed by Berkshire Hathaway—you’ll be doing things that matter, leading at every level, and winning a better way. We’re committed to making a positive impact on the world, providing you with diverse learning and working opportunities, and fostering a culture where everyone’s empowered to be their best.
Marmon Foodservice Technologies designs and manufactures the equipment that powers the world’s largest consumer brands. The way people eat and drink is changing faster than at any point in our history, and the equipment behind it has to change with it. To lead that change, we are building something new. MFT is part of Marmon Holdings, a Berkshire Hathaway company, which gives us the capital and the multi-decade time horizon to build for the long term.
The mission
MFT has won regionally for decades through local customer intimacy and local execution. That strength is real, and it stays. But the next chapter of our growth depends on a different muscle. A small set of global product platforms, designed once, reused everywhere, protected and improved at the enterprise level.
We have built equipment one region at a time for a hundred years. We are now going to find out if we can build it for the world.
The forces pushing us here are real. MFT grew through decades of regional success and selective acquisitions. That history built strong local businesses, and it also left us running parallel platform efforts that are getting more expensive every year. The technology underneath our products has shifted from mostly mechanical to increasingly software, controls, and connectivity, and that shift punishes fragmentation in a way mechanical-only equipment did not.
We are creating the Vice President, Global Product Platforms & Innovation role to build that muscle from the ground up. You will own MFT’s most important platforms end to end. Strategy, roadmap, architecture, technical execution, lifecycle, and economics. The single exception is manufacturing, which is owned by regional plants. You will stand up a dedicated platform organization that has not existed at MFT before. You will define the lanes between platform and region, and you will hold both sides to them.
We are not looking for a heroic founder. We are looking for someone who builds a function that endures past them.
If you do this well, three things will be true in five years. MFT’s priority platforms will be the technical and economic engine of the business. Regional teams will win local customers faster because the platform core gives them more to work with. And MFT will have a repeatable way to invent the next platform after these.
What you’ll own
At launch, you will own three global platforms:
Valve technology and solutions serving the fountain category. The core dispense technology behind some of the world’s most recognized beverage brands.
Contact toasting technology and product platforms for global multinationals. The platform that serves the largest, most demanding QSR customers on the planet.
Holding bin technology platforms. The core hot-holding technology behind consistent food quality at the moment of service.
This is a build role, not a run role. Platform technical work today sits inside regional engineering and product teams. Part of your first eighteen months is transitioning that work into the new dedicated structure, thoughtfully, with the regional Presidents as partners. You will write the operating model, hire and assemble your teams, appoint your Platform Leaders, set the cadences and decision rights, and define the service contract that connects platforms to regions. None of this exists yet. That is the role.
Role Responsibilities & Expectations
Strategy and roadmap. Own the global roadmap for MFT’s priority platforms across a three-to-five-year horizon. Decide what is core and reusable versus what is locally adapted, and keep that boundary stable. Set architecture guardrails that protect scalability, quality, and long-term integrity. Sequence investment across the three platforms based on customer demand, technical readiness, and enterprise value, and revisit that sequencing on a defined cadence.
Build the organization. Identify and select the talent, assemble the teams, appoint your Platform Leaders as direct reports, each owning one platform end to end with a small dedicated technical team that executes the roadmap, manages lifecycle, and develops go-to-market enablement through Voice-of-Customer work. Each Platform Leader is an accountable business owner for their platform.
Operating model. Run platform-to-region as a service contract. Regions can rely on what the platform team ships, and the platform team is held to what it commits. Establish a clean handoff to regional manufacturing. Designs, specifications, and validated configurations from platform; production from regional plants. No overlap between platform teams and regional engineering, except where regions are doing local adaptation or reuse on top of the core.
Technical leadership. Make the architecture calls. Develop platforms with a lifecycle mindset. Manufacturability, reliability, serviceability, and clear paths for future upgrades. Build quality and reliability in from the start.
Platform economics. Own the economic view of each platform. Partner with Group Finance to make platform economics visible at the enterprise level, so reinvestment decisions are made on enterprise value rather than regional P&L visibility alone.
Regional alignment. Bring regional and customer input into platform strategy through defined channels while keeping enterprise discipline. Build credibility by shipping platforms regional teams can actually commercialize, support, and scale.
Skills & Experience
12+ years of senior product, platform, or core-technology leadership in a global organization, with full lifecycle accountability for at least one platform from concept through commercialization and sustaining.
Documented results across regions. Adoption, time to market, cost or margin, or quality and reliability. Numbers you can defend. Experience operating where a global team owns the platform core and regional teams own localization, launch, manufacturing, and customer execution.
Technical depth in electromechanical, engineered product, or equipment platforms. Strong grasp of platform economics and the ability to make and defend reinvestment cases at the enterprise level.
Track record of building a function or operating model from an early state to a delivering state, not only running an established one, and of hiring and developing senior platform or product leaders as direct reports.
The role at steady state
Two or three years in, this role looks like a small, distinctive operating function inside MFT. Three platforms with named owners and dedicated technical teams. A roadmap that runs three to five years out, sequenced and revisited on a defined cadence, with capital allocation that follows the analysis. A working service contract between the platform organization and the regions, where commitments get made, met, and measured.
The cultural signal is also visible by then. Regional leaders bring platform questions to your team because they expect substance, not coordination. Engineering leaders treat your team as the technical authority on the platforms they own. Finance treats your reinvestment cases as serious quantitative work. Customers experience platforms that are more capable, more reliable, and faster to evolve than the regional alternatives that came before them.
What MFT will look for, in deciding whether the role is succeeding, is not a list of metrics in isolation. It is whether MFT itself has built the muscle. Whether the next platform after these three can be created on the foundation this role establishes. Whether the operating model holds up when you eventually move on. Whether the Platform Leaders you hired and developed can run their platforms without you in the room. The work is to build a system. We are looking for the person who can build it.
Benefits
We support your well-being with comprehensive and easy-to-use benefits that you’ll be eligible to enroll in on your first day of employment. Here are some of the highlights:
Medical, Dental, Vision, and Prescription Drug insurance plans
Access to a Health Advocate who is an expert in Marmon’s health plan and can help you select the best health benefits for you and your family
Tax advantaged spending accounts for health and dependent care expenses
Wellness programs and resources including Telehealth, Mental Health, Fitness, and Family Planning
Generous paid time off for personal use, holidays, and parental leave
Company-sponsored life insurance
401(k) with fully vested company match; Marmon may also make an additional annual discretionary contribution to your account, whether or not you contribute on your own
Financial and retirement advising
About Marmon Holdings
Marmon Holdings, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway company, comprises 11 groups and more than 100 autonomous businesses with total annual revenue of $10 billion. Marmon’s 28,000-plus team members are celebrating the company's 70th anniversary in 2023 and helping write the next chapter of Marmon's story.
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Pay Range:
233,200.00 - 349,800.00We offer a comprehensive benefits package that may include medical, dental, vision, 401k matching, and more!
Following receipt of a conditional offer of employment, candidates will be required to complete additional job-related screening processes as permitted or required by applicable law.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and all applicants will be considered for employment without attention to their membership in any protected class. If you require any reasonable accommodation to complete your application or any part of the recruiting process, please email your request to [email protected], and please be sure to include the title and the location of the position for which you are applying.