
Associate Director, Front End Planning
North Chicago, ILJob$142K/yrSeen todaySeen in employer's feed today
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Job overview
The Associate Director, Front End Planning executes feasibility and conceptual designs supporting operations long-range and capital planning. The role develops engineering front-end planning deliverables and strategies for manufacturing capabilities, supports project cost estimates and schedules, and connects strategic design proposals to global manufacturing plans. It also provides technical input and leadership to teams evaluating capital projects, manufacturing opportunities, and network optimization.
Skills & qualifications
Skills
Qualifications
Benefits
Full job description
Company Description
About AbbVie
AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on LinkedIn, (https://www.linkedin.com/company/abbvie/) Facebook, Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/abbvie/) , X (https://twitter.com/abbvie) and YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/user/AbbVie)
Job Description
Responsible for executing feasibility and conceptual level designs that directly support the strategic initiatives outlined in the Operations long range planning and capital planning cycles.
Ensure that Engineering Front End Planning (FEP) objectives are met for engineering designs required to support the existing or new products manufactured by AbbVie. Identify core technologies, designs, and manufacturing requirements needed to develop AbbVie’s manufacturing sites.
Assist in Developing strategies for the manufacturing network to optimize capabilities as measured by cost, capacity, manufacturing, expertise, environment and regulatory compliance. Support development of capital and expense cost estimates and schedules for capital projects at AbbVie’s manufacturing plants or within Global Engineering. Ensure strategic design proposals are controlled by the engineers and project managers and are linked together into a global manufacturing plan through Engineering FEP deliverables and the capital planning financial cycle.
Responsibilities:
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Will develop comprehensive FEP deliverables including manufacturing design scenarios, cost estimates, schedules, and key strategic issues needed to facilitate investment decisions necessary to execute capital projects and facilitate manufacturing, capacity expansions, and network optimization. These early-stage studies should be executed against FEP check lists to ensure that all identifiable issues have been examined and addressed in LRP and Capital Planning scenarios.
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Develop capex for multiple scenarios to align with strategies for key products per global capacity initiatives with regard to cost, tax impact and center of excellence analysis.
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Execute FEP studies to evaluate new commercial opportunities between business development, ECM, R&D, and manufacturing to provide rapid cost-effective manufacturing decisions.
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Provide leadership and a common vision to the manufacturing teams or consulting teams to ensure that roles and issues are clearly understood. Motivate these teams to ensure that momentum is maintained to rapidly develop these early-stage project studies.
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Provide technical input and decision analysis based on the incumbents broad based manufacturing experience to ensure that project assumptions are challenged, options are fully explored, and contingency plans are developed.
Qualifications
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B.S. Engineering or equivalent. M.S. Engineering preferred. MBA desirable.
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Minimum of 10-15 years of chemical/ pharmaceutical manufacturing, engineering, project management, including estimate generation.
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Broad business perspective, knowledge and understanding of manufacturing processes across modalities including API, OSD, Biologics, Sterile Fill and Packaging.
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Strong project experience and an ability to influence others is essential.
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Multi divisional and operational line management experience desirable.
Additional Information
Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law:
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The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future.
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We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.
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This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs.
Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.
AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.
US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html
US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:
https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html
Salary: $141,500
How this job compares
Set against the 7,281 open Engineering jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 4, 2026.
- Pay
- This posting$142K/yr
- Illinois median$110–160K/yr136 salary ranges
- US median$115–180K/yr3,789 salary ranges
This rate, $142K, is 9% above the Illinois median midpoint ($130K) — in the middle half of Engineering salary ranges in Illinois.
- Openings
- Olive Jobs lists 197 open Engineering jobs in Illinois and 7,281 across the US. 3% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
- Hiring the most in Illinois
- Caterpillar, Inc.17 open
- Constellation17 open
- Exelon16 open
- Experience
- This posting asks for at least 10 years of experience; Engineering postings that state a minimum ask for 5 years at the median (4,986 postings).
- Education
- 3,782 of the 7,281 open Engineering jobs (52%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.
Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 4, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.
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