Product Designer (Straps + Camera Accessories)
San Francisco Bay Area
Product /
Full Time /
On-site
ABOUT THE JOB
This is a new product designer role on our small but mighty Straps and Camera Accessories team. Day to day, you’ll own the design, development, and testing of new and existing products on our straps and camera accessories roadmap. This is a hybrid role that requires both hardgoods and softgoods skillsets.
Qualified candidates could be current product designers, design engineers, or industrial designers. A design role at Peak Design is a broad thing - we thrive on a holistic product design process, meaning that the person we hire would be responsible for everything from early ideation and concept development, to prototyping, development builds, production ramp, and sustaining quality improvement. Our product designers interface with industrial designers, mechanical engineers, engineering project managers, and overseas contract manufacturers to drive the full product lifecycle from conception to production. Most companies split these roles into several people (or even several teams), but we think full ownership makes for more passionate and invested product designers, and thus better products. It’s also just more fun than doing the same thing every day.
What You'll Do
- Conduct market research for new product definition, establish design requirements, and generate new product concepts.
- Assemble prototypes in-house using Peak's prototyping equipment or external prototyping services.
- Work with industrial designers to align on design directions and implement them in a parametric CAD stack.
- Work with mechanical engineers to produce a design that is safe, manufacturable, and meets the specific design requirements of the project.
- Formulate, document, and execute test procedures for products in development.
- Manage and organize prototype, EVT, DVT, PVT, and mass production builds.
- Build proficiency in Onshape (CAD) and establish a clear organizational structure for new and old models.
- Oversee and support outsourced CAD resources in China or Vietnam for latter stage design.
Requirements
- Undergraduate or graduate degree in Product Design, Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering, or comparable degree or experience.
- 2+ years of post-grad work experience doing some form of consumer product design.
- Softgoods design experience with textiles, fabric selection, pattern making, and common soft goods construction techniques.
- Hardgoods design experience with, but not limited to CAD, material selection, basic engineering principles, and mechanism design.
- Ability to travel to China or other parts of Asia to visit our suppliers 1-3 times per year.
- Local to the San Francisco Bay Area (or willing to relocate for this role). Willing to work from our office/workshop in the Dogpatch a minimum of 3 days per week (i.e. this is not a remote role, though we do maintain flexibility).
About You
- The following list represents a range of traits and experience that would help make you highly effective and impactful in this role:
- Effective at creating and maintaining complex 3D models in any major 3D CAD system (we use Onshape).
- Familiarity with soft goods and textiles. You know your way around a sewing machine and can make simple sewn or laminated patterns and prototypes.
- Mechanical aptitude, both hands-on and theoretical. You’ve worked extensively with moving parts and mechanisms and like to make physical prototypes.
- Familiarity with a few (or all) of the following manufacturing processes: CNC milling, die casting, injection molding, stamping, extrusion, and assembly.
- Familiarity with various surface finishes: anodization, powder coating, painting, plating.
- Familiarity with the basic materials properties of aluminum alloys, steels, elastomers, and plastics.
- Familiarity with phase-gates manufacturing system (Proto, EVT, DVT, PVT, Mass Production).
- Working knowledge of supply chain structure and ability to navigate communication at various levels of the supply chain.
- Experience owning both mechanical parts/assemblies and softgoods assemblies from prototyping through mass production for high volume (50k+/yr) products that have successfully shipped to customers.
- Product visualization and ideation skills including, sketching, rendering, and advanced surface modeling.
- Experience building production ready models on OnShape.
- Someone who uses and cares a lot about gear. Experience with cameras (DSLR + mirrorless) and photography equipment is a major plus.
$120,000 - $150,000 a year
COMPENSATION
The base salary for this role is targeted between $120-150k USD (for candidates based in the San Francisco Bay Area). Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors and may vary from the amounts listed above.
INTERVIEW PROCESS
Here’s what you can expect:
1) Written application, including a short answer technical screen - online.
2) Technical screen - Zoom - 30 min.
3) Take home assignment (1-2 hrs), followed by a review presentation and interview - Zoom - 60 min.
4) Final round interviews - in-person at Peak Design headquarters - 3 hrs.
