Managing Director, Europe

Multiple Countries
Full Time
Executive
Overview:
Union Park Capital (“UPC”) is a Boston, MA private equity firm focused solely on lower middle-market industrial technology companies. We invest in specialized, niche manufacturers: design, assemble and test businesses that build custom or modified-standard products for demanding applications, often under brand names that are well known in their markets.

These companies win on deep application knowledge and engineering know-how but many have outgrown the processes and systems that got them here. We take a long-term perspective to build value through commercial excellence, process and operational improvements, and product innovation, and we pair that organic growth with an active add-on acquisition strategy. Every platform we own has more acquisitions ahead of it.

UPC is building a pipeline of entrepreneurial Managing Director talent to lead European business units with best-in-class technical products. Reporting to the platform CEO, the Managing Director is the CEO’s voice in Europe and turns the platform’s go-to-market strategy into sustainable, profitable growth: building a motivated commercial team, winning new customers and markets, and driving profitability on the P&L. As the platform adds businesses, the role may grow into leading multiple sites, depending on the candidate and the acquisition.

The right leaders are seasoned, commercially minded and have worked with or for global U.S. companies. They act with urgency and a sense of ownership, and they bring the tools, systems and processes that build a KPI-driven culture in alignment with the corporate playbook, without losing the know-how that has made the business successful.

Responsibilities:
  • Leads a high-performing team and protects engineering expertise, product quality and customer trust while raising the bar on commercial metrics and accountability.
  • Owns the P&L, accountable for regional growth, margin expansion and sustained profitability.
  • Acts independently and proactively as the CEO’s local extension in Europe: represents the platform to customers, employees and partners, and translates the corporate playbook into local execution.
  • Leads the commercial effort in a highly technical, engineer-to-engineer sale: meets customers, discusses products with their engineers, manages reps and distributors, and brings pipeline and forecasting discipline.
  • Partners with the parent company’s U.S. engineering and operations teams to deliver fast, repeatable customization and short lead times for European customers.
  • Assesses the current team, builds on its strengths and develops the talent roadmap across engineering, sales, manufacturing operations and supporting functions.
  • Leads integration with the parent company across ERP, CRM, HRIS, finance and reporting so the platform runs on consolidated, real-time KPIs. Alongside the parent, develops functional scorecards with leading and lagging indicators.
  • Implements a leadership cadence (operating rhythm, shop floor presence, skip-level conversations, staff meetings) and owns the strategic plan and quarterly priorities, communicated to staff.

Qualifications:
  • Degree in Engineering (Bachelor’s, Master’s or Diplom-Ingenieur), Business Administration or related field
  • 10+ years of progressive experience at an industrial manufacturer, including roles in engineering or sales, with preference for hardware technologies (instrumentation, mechanical componentry, test & measurement, sensors, industrial automation or a similar niche, specialized manufacturing environment)
  • Seasoned leader with a commercial mind and a record of driving profitable growth, identifying key talent, building high-performing teams, making hard calls and articulating a compelling vision that inspires performance
  • Experience working with U.S. companies; able to translate a U.S. parent’s expectations, reporting and operating cadence for a local team and local customers
    • Experience working and living in the US strongly preferred but not required.
  • Fluent in English
  • Comfortable in front of customers discussing technical products and credible with their engineers; has built and led sales teams on performance-based variable pay, selling direct and through independent reps, agents, integrators or distributors
  • Comes from, or has built, a professionally run, entrepreneurial, growth-oriented mid-sized business (such as a Mittelstand company) or a decentralized operating unit of a multi-industry company such as ITW; already knows what good structure, process and metrics look like and has put them in place
  • Strong understanding of systems, with the ability to synthesize data across ERP, CRM and related systems to manage business performance, and the financial acumen to understand the levers of a P&L
  • Experienced change agent who brings structure without losing the people, customers or engineering know-how that make the business successful
  • Hands-on mechanical aptitude and at home on the shop floor; direct industry experience not required
  • Experience in a private equity-backed business preferred
  • Experience leading multiple sites or integrating acquired businesses a plus
  • Builds on a strong foundation to unlock the business’s full earnings potential, lifting profitability toward the levels of best-in-class industrial technology companies through pricing discipline, mix, productivity and operating leverage, while continuing to invest in growth.
  • Based at the business’s European site, with regular travel to customers
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