Community Forum – Titles for Senior Technical Positions

What titles do you use for senior technical positions?

What job titles does your organization use for the senior most technical/R&D ladder positions? – Cecil Chappelow, Vice President, Innovation and Sustainability, Chief Innovation Officer, PolyOne Corporation

Community Responses

Response 1
Our technical career ladder in ascending order is as follows: Engineer, Senior Engineer, Principal Engineer, Specialist, Senior Specialist, Scientist/Technologist, Senior Scientist/Technologist. The differentiation between Scientist and Technologist is that the Scientist requires a PhD.

– Steve Johnson, Director Process Technology, Timken Company

Response 2
At Eastman, our top Technical ladder positions are:

Senior Associate
Fellow

In addition we have appointed two individuals over the years to Senior Fellow for their sustained and extraordinary contributions to a diverse number of areas. We currently have one individual with this title.

– Greg Nelson, SVP and CTO, Eastman Chemical Co.

Response 3
Senior Fellow, Followed by Fellow, Followed by Principal Scientist.

– Tom Kavassalis, Vice President, Strategy & Alliances, Xerox

Response 4
At Owens Corning, the R&D technical ladder progression is as follows:

· Entry Masters or PhDs Titles:  Engineer / Scientist or Advanced Engineer Scientist
· Intermediate (mid-career level) Title: Sr. Scientist / Sr. Engineer
· Senior Technical Level 1: Research Associate / Principal Engineer
· Senior Technical Level 2: Sr. Research Associate / Sr. Principal Engineer

– Paula Russell, OwensCorning

Response 5
We use Sr. Fellow and Fellow,

– Terry L. Tice, Department Leader, Human Resources, United Technologies Research Center

Response 6
My old company, ICI has three senior technical positions:
Hay Grade 37 – business Research Associate; 
Hay Grade 39 – Research Associate (Company);
Hay Grade 40 Senior Research Associate (Company).

– David Parker, IRI Emeritus

Response 7
Chief Scientist

– Johann Venter, Vice President, Director of Technology, AMVAC

Response 8
At DuPont we used Research Associate and Research Fellow.  We had the same at Colgate Palmolive, but they were not happy.  I appointed a committee of them to choose the name they wanted. After many meetings, they decided to keep the titles they had. What was more important was to give them equivalent perks to management, i.e. parking, office space, secretarial help, etc.  

– Jules Blake, former CTO  of 3 companies: Mallinckrodt, Kendall and Colgate and past Chairman of IRI

Response 9
Senior Research Scientist

– Larry Gollob, Director of R&D, Georgia-Pacific

Response 10
Intel uses:

Senior Fellow (highest)
Fellow
Senior Principal Engineer
Principal Engineer

– Mike Witteman, Director, Strategy & Planning, Intel Labs

Response 11
The senior most technical / R&D ladder position within our organization is “Fellow”.

– Enos Leed, Mars Inc.

Response 12
In my previous companies, we used Senior Research Fellow, or Senior Research Director.

– VP, Global consumer products company

Response 13
You may be interested to hear the history of Chief Innovation Officer. In 1998, I co-authored a book ‘Fourth Generation R&D’ which coined the term and defined the position. For several years at Steelcase, I had been VP of Research and Business Development reporting to the CEO because innovation drove the business, which was more than technology – either product, process or IT. And innovation had to do experiments with customers and partners (open innovation). My title represented the scope of innovation that included responsibility for doing experiments that demonstrated the value of specific acquisitions. The issue of scope is key. A recent post gives the history of why the position of Chief Innovation Officer was created in a financial service firm. See this link.

The issue of scope is changing universities who frequently expand the title of VP Research to VP Research and Economic Development since they want to commercialize the results of research.

There is nothing wrong with being a CTO or VP Research, but it’s much better if that position reports to a Chief Innovation Officer in an organization that practices the Fourth Generation of Innovation.

BTW, the scope of education also has to change to create “T-shaped” leaders.

– Bill Miller, PhD, IRI emeritus, President, 4G Innovation LLC, CEP, Innovation Extension Center LLC