Senior Product Development Engineer — Mechanical Design, SolidWorks & Product Innovation

DesignThink, Inc. is a product design and development consultancy looking for an exceptionally talented freelance/contract Mechanical / Product Development Engineer to join our team immediately on a 6-month contract with the potential to become a full-time employee.

We frequently encounter problems where there is no predefined engineering solution. You will be expected to establish a path forward, evaluate alternatives, apply sound engineering principles, and determine whether the resulting design can actually work. You should be comfortable with ambiguity and enjoy figuring out the answer when there isn't a clear engineering path laid out in front of you.

We're not looking for someone who simply executes a design that someone else has already figured out. We want an engineer with a demonstrated ability to independently analyze a mechanical problem, identify potential solutions, evaluate tradeoffs, and determine an appropriate path forward. You should be comfortable sitting at the table with industrial designers, engineers, clients, and manufacturers and actively contributing to determining how the product should work.

What we're looking for
• 5+ years of professional experience in mechanical engineering and product development
• Expert-level experience with SolidWorks solid and surfacing modeling, including working with complex or imperfect geometry
• Ability to reverse-engineer products from physical parts, scans, existing CAD, industrial-design surfaces, or other imperfect information
• Experience taking products from early concepts through detailed mechanical design and manufacturing
• Strong experience designing injection-molded plastic parts
• Excellent understanding of DFM/DFA, tolerancing, materials, mechanisms, fasteners, and manufacturing processes
• Experience working with real manufactured products, not just CAD
• Strong ability to develop and evaluate product concepts and mechanical solutions
• Ability to reverse-engineer products from physical parts, scans, existing CAD, industrial-design surfaces, or other imperfect information
• Product design/development consultancy experience is highly desirable
• Comfortable collaborating with industrial designers, electrical engineers, clients, vendors, and manufacturers
• Creative, analytical, and practical problem solver who contributes ideas rather than simply executing instructions
• Strong communication skills
• Fast. We work in a fast-paced environment and need someone who can move quickly without sacrificing quality.

What you'll actually be doing
Depending on the project, you may be:
• Helping generate and develop product concepts
• Figuring out how a product or mechanism should actually work
• Developing mechanical architectures and design approaches
• Reverse-engineering existing products
• Developing complex CAD geometry and surfaces
• Turning industrial-design concepts into engineered, manufacturable products
• Designing injection-molded housings, components, mechanisms, and assemblies
• Working through packaging, tolerances, materials, and manufacturing constraints
• Developing prototypes and iterating designs
• Working directly with clients and manufacturers
• Solving problems where the answer isn't obvious
• Taking a product from "Here's the problem" to "Here's how we're going to solve it”

The person we're looking for
We're looking for an engineer who likes to create.
You should be comfortable with ambiguity and enjoy figuring out the answer when there isn't a clear engineering path laid out in front of you.
You might be handed a rough concept, a physical product, a sketch, a set of constraints, or simply a problem and be expected to figure out what the product should be and how to make it work.

We expect you to be able to:
Understand the problem - develop possible solutions - apply engineering judgment - determine the best approach - build it in CAD - test and refine it.
That's the part of product development we love, and that's where we want you to contribute.

Engagement
• 6-month contract with the potential to become a full-time employee
• Typically, 20–40 hours/week
• Immediate availability preferred
• Potential for ongoing work
• Because we are a product-development consultancy, project demands can occasionally require additional hours or schedule flexibility to meet critical deadlines.

We are looking for someone willing and able to provide additional hours when project demands require it.

To apply
Please don't send a generic résumé and nothing else. We want to understand what you can actually do.
1. Tell us about a product where you personally contributed to the concept, mechanical architecture, or overall design approach, rather than simply modeling someone else's design.
2. Describe your experience with surfacing and reverse engineering in SolidWorks or resulting in a SolidWorks file. Give us a specific example and explain what you personally did.
3. Tell us about your experience designing injection-molded plastic products. What types of products and parts have you personally designed?
4. Tell us about 2–3 products you have personally engineered that made it to physical prototype or production. Include images or portfolio links if available.
5. What type of product-development problem do you consider yourself particularly good at solving?
6. How quickly could you start, what is your hourly rate, and how many hours per week are you currently available?