Head of Product Development (Mechanical Engineer) — Fast-Growing Ecommerce Power Tool Brand

Full-Time | Remote (Australia-Based) | $140,000 – $170,000 + super

🔧 Want to own the entire product function of a fast-growing Australian power tool brand — leading and engineering innovative tools that end up in households across the country?

What we build next, how it's engineered, the quality it holds — all yours. Full autonomy, no layers, no committee. And as the range grows, you build the team around you and grow with it.

🌱 Who We Are

Gardeners Crate is an Australian DTC brand on a mission: to give people their independence back in the garden. We build cordless garden power tools that let everyday Aussies look after their own garden again, without the heavy, awkward tools getting in the way or relying on anyone else.

For our customers, that independence means everything. They’re not just buyers, they’re a community who got their confidence back, their garden back, and in many cases a piece of themselves back. We move fast, we care deeply, and we’re building something worth being part of.

🧠 How We Think

Everything comes back to the customer. Which material, which mechanism, how it's assembled, how it's serviced, what goes in the box — every one of those is a decision about the person holding the tool before it's a decision about engineering. Cost matters, convenience matters, but neither wins over the customer.

And we're not here to make a slightly better version of what exists. We build tools that the category said couldn't be made.

⚡ Why This Role Exists

We're growing fast and adding new products. The product side needs one person who owns it end to end, from the customer's problem through to mass production, and then makes sure every batch that follows holds the same standard.

The range is focused today: one main product, a small set of accessories, one manufacturer. The range is small. The problems aren't. Motors, batteries, moving parts under load, moulded housings, Australian compliance, and a customer who has to be able to use all of it easily.

This is a role for builders. A lot of it is unfinished, and that's the opportunity. You'd be doing the CAD yourself, running the tests yourself, and building the process we don't have yet. What you put in place is what everything after you runs on.

If you've led a team and want to keep leading a team, this isn't that role yet. If you've led one and you miss being on the ground, with real authority and no layers in the way, this will feel like room to build.

🛠️ What You’ll Own

The product, end to end. Cordless power tools, garden equipment and accessories, from the customer's problem to the tool in their hands, and every batch after that.

• New product development, end to end. Working alongside the founders: we bring the customer problem, you bring the technical read. Research what people use today and why it fails them, tear down what's out there, work out what we should build. Then take it all the way to units in market, with multiple products running in parallel.
• Engineering and drawings. Mechanism design, structural work, tolerances, full CAD, and the drawing packages our manufacturer builds from. How it's assembled, what a customer can replace themselves, and packing efficiency. You write the technical brief for our designer and turn what comes back into something that can be made at scale.
• Moulds, tooling and cost. Mould specification, comparing quotes on what they actually buy rather than price alone, and documenting the condition, life and location of the tools we own. Every material and component, and what each should cost. Find the savings that take cost out without ever compromising quality or how the product performs.
• Prototyping and testing. Build and test prototypes yourself. Design the testing that proves a product lasts as long as we say it does, with third-party test houses running it.
• Quality, every batch. Write the inspection standards our manufacturer and QC partners work to. Brief the manufacturer before every run, read the reports, track the defect rate batch to batch, and drive corrective actions until the number moves.
• The manufacturer, technically. Work with their engineering team on what's achievable with their equipment and processes, and hold them to a technical standard.
• Returns and continuous improvement. With operations manager, work out why products come back, find the cause, fix it with the manufacturer, and feed it into the next run. Every batch better than the last.
• Compliance and certification. Australian standards, product certification, and the warranty we stand behind. You'd work with our compliance agency and know enough to challenge them.
• Specialists, sourcing and documentation. Bring in expertise where we need it — electrical, testing, IP, sourcing — brief them properly and judge what comes back. Own customer manuals, assembly instructions, safety content, spare parts, and the technical side of our product videos.

✅ What you sign off on

You're the approval point for any change to the product — material, component, process or spec. Nothing changes without you. You sign off on technical readiness, quality and tooling before production, and you bring us trade-offs with options rather than problems.

👤 Who You Are

• 6+ years hands-on, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Product Design Engineering or a related discipline.
• End-to-end new product development. You've taken complex electromechanical products — motors, subsystems, moving parts under load — from a customer problem through to volume production, on multiple products at once. And you've decided what to build, not just how.
• Engineering craft. GD&T and tolerance analysis, the full manufacturing package — 3D CAD and dimensioned 2D drawings a factory builds from — hands-on prototyping, and you've worked alongside industrial design through to production.
• Injection moulding and tooling ownership. Mould class, cavitation, shot life, T1 corrections. And you've reduced unit cost at component level without compromising the product.
• Quality with a manufacturer. Inspection standards, defect codes, corrective actions, root cause on failures nobody could explain, and hold-or-ship calls under commercial pressure.
• Managing a manufacturer at distance, with the technical depth to understand the reasoning behind what they propose.
• Certification end to end in some regime, and safety-critical design — guards, interlocks, hazard analysis. Enough electrical literacy to specify a motor and read a test report; you won't be designing circuits.
• You keep your engineering records straight — drawings, BOMs, test results, defect logs — and you're comfortable working without an in-house lab, QC team or anyone underneath you. Australia-based.

Power tools, garden or outdoor equipment is a real advantage — though we're just as interested in people from outside the category who'll think differently about it.

🚫 Probably not the right fit

• Machinery, mining, medical or industrial equipment only. Good engineering, different discipline.
• Commercial product management — range, pricing, portfolio rather than engineering.
• An engineering manager who hasn't been hands-on in years.
• Someone who produces drawings to a brief rather than working out what should be built.

🚀 What We Offer

• $140,000 – $170,000 plus super, set on experience.
• Complete ownership from day one. You own the product, you make the calls, and you build it your way. Supported, not micromanaged.
• Work directly with the founders. Two people who've already built and scaled an ecommerce brand to over 100,000 customers, now pouring that into this one. No layers, no bureaucracy. Plus direct access to operators who've built brands doing hundreds of millions in revenue.
• Customers you can actually talk to. Most engineers never get near the person using what they build. Here you can pick up the phone — we have hundreds who've put their hand up to test what we make next.
• Fully remote. Work from anywhere in Australia.
• A role that grows with the brand into leading your own product development team, with your package growing alongside it.

And work that actually means something. Every product you get right is someone who can look after their own place again, on their own terms, instead of waiting for help or giving it up altogether. The better you do this, the more people we reach.

📩 How To Apply

Send us two things: your resume with detailed roles and duties, and answers to the two questions below along with your cover letter.

1. Answer these two questions

Be as detailed as you like. The longer and more specific the better — real numbers, real names, what actually happened.

1. Walk us through one product you took from start to finish, including the parts that didn't go well.
2. Tell us about a quality problem you owned over time — where the number started, how you found the cause, what you changed with the manufacturer, and where it ended up.

2. A short cover letter

Write as long as you need. We'd like to know:

• Why this role, and why this business specifically
• What excites you about what we're building
• Why you think you're the right person for it
• And honestly — what would make you walk away after six months?