Description

Product Design Engineer III - Innovation (Machine Elements & Plastics Focus)

 

Job Summary

 

Springs Window Fashions is seeking a highly creative and technically strong Product Design Engineer III – Innovation to join our Innovation organization. This role is focused on early-stage concept creation and mechanical innovation, with a strong emphasis on machine elements, plastic parts, gears, and mechanisms used in consumer products.

 

This position plays a critical role in feeding and shaping the innovation portfolio, transforming unmet customer needs into differentiated, manufacturable product concepts. The ideal candidate combines deep mechanical engineering fundamentals with hands-on creativity, strong consumer intuition, and comfort working in ambiguous, early-phase development environments.

 

Key Responsibilities

Concept Creation & Early Innovation

• Identify unmet consumer needs and opportunity areas through collaboration with Innovation, Marketing, and Voice-of-Customer insights
• Generate innovative mechanical concepts and system architectures, including machine elements (springs, gears, linkages, clutches, dampers, drives), injection-molded plastic parts, and cost-efficient mechanisms.
• Translate early hypotheses about customer needs into functional requirements through rapid consumer testing, prototyping, and tight feedback loops, while applying engineering first principles such as FBDs, kinematics, and trigonometry-based geometry to derive custom motion and force relationships.
• Build and evaluate early-stage prototypes and proof-of-concept models.
• Assess concepts early for performance, durability, cost, manufacturability, and scalability.

Mechanical Design & Development

• Develop mechanical designs using 3D CAD tools (SolidWorks preferred), including tolerancing and design-for-assembly principles.
• Lead material and process selection for plastic parts, gears, and mechanical subsystems.
• Design components with focus on safety, reliability, value, and durability.
• Collaborate with suppliers and manufacturing partners to evaluate tooling and cost tradeoffs.

 

Requirements

Education & Experience

• BS in Engineering with a minimum of 6+ years of relevant engineering experience.
• Must be flexible with assignments, able to work independently, and collaborate effectively in a team environment.
• Must be organized, methodical, able to manage multiple tasks simultaneously, and capable of meeting established timelines.
• Receives direction from the Engineering Manager. Expected to manage multiple large or medium scope projects and must document testing and communicate results clearly.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Strong creative and conceptual thinking skills
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to work effectively with ambiguity and rapidly iterate on concepts.
• Working understanding of basic business cases, including preliminary revenue projections and concept-level value propositions.
• Experience participating in consumer testing activities such as focus groups, clinics, interviews, usability tests, competitive and product benchmarking, or observational research.
• Hands-on, DIY / maker mindset with ability to prototype and build concepts quickly.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.