Director/Senior Manager of Product Development

Hirsh Industries•Des Moines, IA

22h•Hybrid

About The Position

Hirsh Industries is seeking a leader for its Product Development function to manage the entire lifecycle of a new product, from initial market insight through concept, design, manufacturing, and launch. This is a design-led role focused on understanding customer needs, defining product specifications, guiding the engineering team, and collaborating with manufacturing to bring products to reality. The role is responsible for driving products from idea to market and expanding Hirsh's presence in new markets. This position reports to the VP of Marketing and Engineering and involves cross-functional collaboration with engineering, operations, sourcing, and sales.

Requirements

5–10 years of product development, product design, or industrial-design experience for physical, manufactured products.
A portfolio or track record of products taken from concept to launch.
Strong design sensibility — ability to balance form, function, cost, and manufacturability; ability to give clear design direction to an engineering team.
Comfort working directly with factories and engineering to bring a design into production.
Commercial and financial acumen — able to size a market, build product cost models and a multi-year business case, reason about pricing, margins, and ROI.
Active user of AI tools with genuine enthusiasm for the space, eager to learn and share.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
Ability to lead cross-functional work without direct authority while managing multiple projects.
Bachelor's degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience.
Willingness to travel as needed (roughly 3-5 trips per year).

Nice To Haves

Experience designing durable consumer or commercial products across a range of materials (metal, wood, plastics, composites, etc.).
Familiarity with manufacturing, sourcing, and supply-chain processes.
Familiarity with CAD (e.g., SolidWorks) to collaborate effectively with engineering.
Comfort with Adobe Creative Cloud.
Experience launching products across omni-channel retail (big-box, mass, club, e-commerce) and/or commercial/contract channels.
Familiarity with a stage-gate / phase-gate development process.
Master's degree in a design, engineering, or business field.

Responsibilities

Discover & decide: market research and the business case (research market size and growth, competitive product analysis, product teardowns, unique selling proposition, target customer, product cost models, sales-channel and logistics fit, multi-year financial case, customer and end-user insight translation into product brief and value proposition).
Define & design: concept through detailed design (generate and develop concepts, partner with engineering on CAD and prototypes, own product design direction including form, function, ergonomics, aesthetics, user experience, target cost, and quality, design with manufacturing in mind, confirm concept fits Hirsh's manufacturing capabilities).
Implement: factory readiness (partner with engineering and factories on tooling, process, first articles, pilot runs, resolve tradeoffs during industrialization, confirm product meets specifications, cost targets, and regulatory requirements).
Launch: bring it to market (drive launch with sales and marketing on positioning, packaging, point-of-purchase, sales enablement, support forecasting and production ramp, review performance against business case post-launch).