Job Description

Kearney PERLab – Manager -Vehicle Integration

Full-time

INDIA
Bangalore

Job description

As a Manager, Vehicle Integration at Kearney, you will contribute to consulting project teams as they offer honest advice and practical guidance to our clients. Depending on each client’s unique needs, projects can differ in length, size, and location, giving you unique, hands-on experiences across a range of industries and service practices.

About Kearney PERLab

Kearney PERLab (Product Excellence and Renewal Lab) is Kearney’s global dedicated practice for “everything product.” We help clients make products that consumers fall in love with. Our design-driven approach to gross margin transformation offers end-to-end capabilities to support growth at every point in a product’s life cycle.

PERLab combines 100 years of Kearney’s operational expertise with award-winning design and cutting-edge proprietary data tools to unlock tangible product gains. With experts across product design, product development, sustainability, user experience, industrial design, IoT, consumer insights, product engineering, packaging design, and manufacturing excellence, PERLab’s end-to-end capabilities can support your growth at any point in your product’s life cycle.

PERLab has studios in Chicago, Stuttgart, Bengaluru, Hamburg, and Shanghai, with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to private equity portfolio firms.

We operate across three core capability areas:

Insights & Strategy: Consumer intelligence, brand assessment, and portfolio optimization to drive profitable growth. 
Product Engineering & Design: Architecture, benchmarking, and component optimization from concept through production. 
Sustainability & Manufacturing Excellence: Cost-efficient manufacturing at scale with sustainability built in by design.

Our flagship technology platform, Velocity AI, is a PERLab accelerator powered by agentic AI — rebuilding product development as a smart, connected system. Velocity AI connects intelligent agents across the product life cycle, automating tasks, learning continuously, and enabling products to be delivered faster and at lower cost while ensuring sustainability and market relevance.

The Bengaluru engineering team builds and maintains the Velocity platform suite — powering PERLab’s global consulting engagements with AI-driven intelligence.

Working alongside a dedicated and diverse set of people, you will broaden your knowledge and experience in an open, agile, and collaborative environment. With the freedom to be yourself and recognition for what you bring to the table, you can put your purpose into action and help build a future that works for everyone, everywhere—as a Kearney Original.

Key Responsibilities

1.     Vehicle-Level Diagnostic & Systems Analysis

Conduct full vehicle teardown studies
Lead cross-functional root cause investigations
Analyze integration conflicts between :    Battery pack & chassis, Thermal systems, HV/LV electrical architecture, ADAS & software systems, Vehicle dynamics systems
Identify architecture redundancies and inefficiencies

2.     Cost & Weight Optimization

Lead BOM rationalization initiatives
Reduce wiring harness complexity
Identify over-engineered subsystems
Optimize structural integration (e.g., battery pack mounting strategy)
Drive multi-functional component consolidation
KPIs: Cost per vehicle reduction,  weight reduction, Part count reduction

3.     Performance & Efficiency Improvement

Improve vehicle range through: Thermal optimization, Power electronics efficiency improvements, Rolling resistance reduction
Improve NVH and vibration isolation
Optimize regenerative braking integration

4.     Architecture Simplification

Evaluate feasibility of ECU consolidation, Zonal architecture migration, Software simplification, Trim complexity
Reduce system interfaces and communication complexity

Key Deliverables

Business case on potential benefits with strong backing
Vehicle optimization roadmap
Cost-down implementation plan
Competitive benchmarking report
Executive-level performance improvement summaries
Conducting workshops and Buyoff.

Who you are:

After nearly 100 years, we know this business is fundamentally about making connections—between facts, figures, insights, strategies, tools, technologies, and above all, people. That’s why we look for collaborative, insightful, and inquisitive problem-solvers who don’t accept the first thing in front of them and who are always unapologetically themselves.

We would like to hear from you if you have the following:

̶Ready to share your ideas and contribute as soon as you join a team
Analytically inclined and enjoy solving problems
Able to prioritize and are a doer by nature
15 - 20 years of automotive engineering experience
Strong exposure to ICE & EV system integration
Deep understanding of: ICE platforms, Vehicle dynamics, Battery systems, Electrical architecture, Thermal management,Vehicle packaging
Experience leading product cost reduction, teardown & benchmarking programs
Strong data-driven decision capability

Leadership Expectation:
Systems-level thinker
Strong cross-functional influencer
Conflict resolution capability
Financial acumen (engineering cost impact)
Change management leader

Ideal Candidate Profile:

Someone who can walk into an existing EV vehicle, dissect it technically, commercially, and architecturally — and deliver measurable performance, cost, and reliability improvements without redesigning the entire platform.

What we can offer you

Every day, our people work to be the difference for our clients, our communities, and our colleagues. Helping them make an impact, they are sustained by a competitive remuneration package plus comprehensive benefits and perks, including but not limited to:

̶Generous retirement/pension savings contributions
Comprehensive medical insurance for employees and their families
Non-partner equity-based awards (for consulting managers and above)
Structured and on-the-job learning and development opportunities
Personalized opportunities including talent mobility, flexible work programs and externships to help you chart a unique career journey to pursue your own personal and professional goals

Read more about our benefits and how you can make your mark, your way at Kearney.com/careers.

Equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination

Kearney prides itself on providing a culture where our employees belong and thrive equally, which means our people feel comfort, confidence, and joy as they do great things for our firm, our colleagues, and our clients. That’s why Kearney is committed to building a diverse workforce and inclusive environment. Kearney is an equal opportunity employer; we recruit, hire, train, promote, develop, and provide other conditions of employment without regard to a person’s gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, religion, age, national origin, disability, marital status, pregnancy status, veteran status, genetic information, or any other differences consistent with applicable laws. This includes providing reasonable accommodation for disabilities or religious beliefs and practices. We encourage everyone to apply, including those who may not feel historically represented in consulting.

Apply now
Submit your CV (doc or .pdf format only) via our website
Interview process
If your profile is shortlisted, we will reach out to you with further details on the interview process.
 

Language Requirements

NA