Product Design Engineer

Take a designer's concept and engineer it into something that folds, locks and can be made, then oversee it into production with the engineering team in China. On award-winning products full of moving parts, the question asked of you is how it works, not how it looks.

You'll be joining a long-established, design-led consumer brand with Red Dot and iF Design awards to its name, making premium products people recognise out and about. Design and engineering happen in-house, in a newly refurbished studio with its own workshop, and manufacturing is in China. The business is now moving into new categories.

The role

The products are mechanism-heavy, so most of your time goes on multi-part assemblies, linkages and complex surfacing in SolidWorks, and on the design for manufacture calls across plastics and metals that make a concept buildable. Once a design is ready, you hand it to the engineering team in China and oversee it through tooling into production, while the next project is already on your desk.

You'll be the engineering voice in a small team, the link between the designer and the factory, with a say in what the business builds next.

What you'll need

• Advanced SolidWorks, covering multi-part assemblies, linkages, mechanisms and complex surfacing, at a level you could comfortably share with a less experienced engineer.
• Proven experience engineering complex physical products from concept through to production, where the mechanism and assembly decisions were yours.
• Hands-on experience of injection moulding, overmoulding and design for manufacture across both plastics and metals.
• Experience handing designs over to a manufacturer and overseeing them through tooling and into production.

The details

• Reporting to the Director of Product and Design
• Small design team of four or five in the UK
• Two or three trips a year to the team in China
• Direct trains from London
• Flexible hours and an early Friday finish
• Start: ASAP
• Pension, life cover and 24/7 GP access
• Cycle to work scheme and product discount
• Training and development budget
• Option to buy extra holiday

What it isn't

This isn't a management role, and there's no team to run. The design team is four or five people, so the growth comes from the complexity of the work, not a ladder. It isn't a styling role either. The look sits with the industrial designer and final manufacture with the team in China. The engineering in between is yours. You'll be on site through probation, with hybrid working after that.

If this sounds like your next move, click Apply and we'll be in touch.