Job Description

Hyundai KIA America Technical Center, Inc (HATCI) is looking for a Benchmarking & Research Analyst at our Ann Arbor, MI facility. HATCI, as a research and development organization, supports product-planning initiatives for Hyundai, Genesis, and Kia in the North American market. HATCI's Product Planning group takes on benchmarking activities, a primary responsibility of the Market and Competitive Intelligence (MCI) team. The roll of this MCI engineer will contribute to the organization's understanding of the current market and identify important trends amongst our competition.

We are looking for that special person that can bring good synergy to our already awesome group of people. This person should be hardworking, have a positive-attitude, be forward thinking, and be willing to help shift the culture to integrate benchmarking/trends info as a serious consideration for decision-making. This person should be comfortable with working with cross-functional teams, learning about technical or design advances, attending auto shows, digging for information, and communicating subtle or revolutionary advances in the market. This person needs to be able to make a positive impact even amidst some ambiguity - come in with a figure-it-out attitude.

Responsibilities and opportunities, but not limited to the following:

• Maintain relationship with benchmarking providers including Caresoft, A2MAC1, AutoKnowledge, and others
• Manage and develop supplier relationship/contacts to have first-knowledge of their offerings, data availability, and costs of offerings
• Act as facilitator and awareness-maker within HATCI so functional teams know resources, including data access trainings, special-topic presentations, and visits to suppliers
• Arrange for special opportunities for HATCI teams to view/drive new market entries from suppliers when they bring in new competitive models
• Learn, be aware, communicate when they may be tearing down HMG models
• Manage contracts and funding with suppliers
• Collect 'eye-catching' reports from suppliers and make available to HATCI teams

• Enhance Benchmarking Report Structure and Timing Plans as defined by HATCI Product Planning
• Arrange for vehicle rental or acquisition and establish internal benchmarking schedule within Product Planning and with functional teams
• Work with functional teams to establish property needs and timing needs
• Prepare technical reports and present findings to senior management. At a minimum, provide format for summary reporting to functional teams, collect summaries, compile summaries (back-end of report), create overview (front-end of report), and coordinate presenters to senior management

• Assist with Auto show attendance and reports
• Assist with managing regular meetings using auto-show prep checklist and schedule
• Assist in developing reports for Auto shows: Preview report, Debrief Report, Tour Document. Disseminate format for teams to capture trends during auto show attendance, collect and include in debrief report
• Assist in auto show logistical requirements: guest credentials, accommodations, conference/meeting rooms and other amenities

• Communicate Product Trends via reports or report contribution
• Contribute to product trend identification to regular bi-annual Sales reports, bi-monthly Pulse Trends report, Auto Show reports, and as needed within product planning
• Create method to identify revolutionary advances amongst competitors (e.g. Tesla mega casting) and develop method/report/alert to communicate to the larger HATCI team or relevant functional team
• Utilize primary and secondary sources to collect product knowledge (teardowns, online data from suppliers/sources, secondary research, expert panel)
• Investigate media and customer responses to understand 'soft' issues related to Vehicles, Powertrain, Technologies, and Features

• Contribute to vision and implementation of integrating benchmarking deeper into organizational discipline
• Lead annual visioning workshop for scoping benchmarking initiatives (expanding, contracting, facilitations, etc.)
• Continually propose innovative approaches and methods of communication

• Assist MCI group with other activities / responsibilities:
• Contribute to reports - Sales, Auto Shows, Trends, OEM Summaries, Segment Overviews
• Monitor current Economic and Automotive Industry indicators, especially those impacting future product content
• Coordinate and contribute to completion of new model debut 1-pagers, media feedback as content to Auto Show reports

• Understand HATCI benchmarking needs, timing, and where value could be added by developing close relationships with functional groups
• Take proactive approaches to finding/arranging primary experience or secondary research to continuously inform functional teams, as well as Product Planning
• Maintain close relationship with Product Planning team to understand benchmarking needs in order provide/coordinate benchmarking inputs to overall PP1 development

• Collaborate within HATCI Product Planning teams:
• Collaborate with Product Planning teams on Identifying competitive sets, target customers, and possible impacts on current and future vehicles and industry trends
• Identifying possible impacts on future Product Strategy & Technology trends
• Support Cross-line Planner on wide-ranging studies focused on features/technology/execution strategies across corporate & brand lineups

• Data analysis experience/expertise in data manipulation, observations, insights, recommendations:
  • Handling data sets: mTab, SPSS, excel, pivot tables

Automotive data: AutoPacific, AutoSource, AutoKnowledge, NVCS, IHS, IQS, CR, Edmunds, and other resources

• Attend industry conferences & integrate learnings into market/trend reports
• Manage long and in-depth projects, alongside quick-hit ad hoc requests
  • Embrace new projects (areas outside of expertise) with some level of comfort with ambiguity
  • Willingness to switch focus to assist with team initiatives/deliverables, contribute to group work/reports
  • Willingness to figure out systems, ask for assistance, ask questions, follow formats
• Travel potentially up to 20% of time, domestically and possibly internationally

• Experience and Skills
  • Bachelor's degree in appropriate Engineering, Business, or Data Science field of study
  • 2+ years of experience in Benchmarking, Innovation, Market Research, or Product Planning, ideally in the automotive industry
  • Some automotive experience, including but not limited to: Vehicle evaluation, component testing or teardown, competitive intelligence, program management, customer research, forecasting, strategic planning, quality, vendor management
  • Experience with data analysis. Particularly valuable would be experience with: IQS, NVCS, AutoKnowledge, AutoSource, AutoPacific, and secondary research
  • Moderate+ level of PowerPoint. Comfortable with Excel including pivot tables