Group Leader, Applications Development

Responsibilities

As Leader:
•    Understand technical and business strategies, vision, and goals related to the group, and utilize this understanding to communicate and implement priorities through appropriate resource allocation and cross-functional alignment.
•    Ensure every employee understands their respective assignments and impact on both short and long term financial success
•    Create a vision for what the group needs to become to support and guide technical and business strategies.
•    Develop and implement plans to assess and deliver key core competencies supporting and guiding strategies. 
•    Partner with the business in understanding options that exist for executing or modifying business strategy. 
•    Lead continual improvement of the group through coaching and participation in division leadership teams.
•    Foster effective cross-functional , inter-group and interdivisional relationships in and out of Technology
•    Champion proposals for needed resources, capabilities and capital projects to management to support and enable strategies
•    Inform and influence division leadership team, gatekeeping teams and industry teams with viable technical options to enable strategies and meet business goals. 

As Coach:
•    Attract, engage, develop, and retain the talent needed to provide capabilities to execute technical and business strategies 
•    Provide technical guidance, mentoring and support personal development plans
•    Ensure appropriate training and competence development in key technologies, intellectual property processes, interpersonal interaction skills, leadership skills, and business/corporate strategies. 
•    Identify and develop key contributors and future leaders by planning growth assignments, team participation, and by execution of effective succession planning.  Prepare and enable personnel to move to new assignments. 
•    Enable individual contributors and project teams to lead and develop group members to achieve a higher level of performance. 
•    Motivate and provide feedback to employees on a regular basis through individual discussions and based upon “in the field” experiences
•    Actively use performance management processes to set expectations and provide feedback.

As Manager:
•    Manage costs within limits of established budgets and ensure cost control strategies are implemented as needed
•    Ensure talent succession plans are established and maintained
•    Develop and maintain clear understanding of the market and regulatory trends as well as key drivers and barriers affecting solutions in selected industries or markets. 
•    Identify key influencers, including trade associations and regulatory agencies, their impact on developing growth platform concepts, and strategy for engaging.
•    Use data and analytics to support assessments, recommendations and choices. 
•    Ensure compliance with all legal and corporate requirements.
•    Promote effective teamwork by removing barriers between individuals and groups. 
•    Ensure resources and capabilities are available and property allocated.
•    Ensure work is correctly documented and catalogued in salesforce.com or other appropriate databases.
•    Communicate the status of key projects, priorities, constraints and group capabilities to key internal partners, including technical and business management.
•    Ensure Eastman and customer confidential information is appropriately protected. 
•    Development and implementation of proactive customer engagement strategies.

Qualifications

Required Education:

•    BS, Masters or Ph. D. in Polymer Chemistry, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Material Science or related field is required.

Preferred Skills/Experience:

•    Five or more years of experience in polymer-related fields
•    Knowledge of trends in the polymer industry and how they relate to key growth markets
•    Ability to work with ambiguity in a fast-paced action-oriented team.
•    Demonstrated customer empathy and the ability to understand customer needs. 
•    Ability to think intuitively in order to lead to customer or industry engagements with insights. 
•    Prior experience working at the interface of technology, commercial functions and customers.
•    Working knowledge of Salesforce.com databases and dashboards

Other Information: 

•    Up to 20% travel may be required for this position