Senior Mechanical Engineer

Simplehuman•Torrance, CA

28d

About The Position

Day to day life has room for improvement. That was our basic thinking when we founded simplehuman in 2000. Our mission is to bring high-performance and sustainable innovation to basic but essential tasks in our daily routine at home. Through new technologies, meticulous engineering and an obsession for improvement, we find new and better ways to achieve basic but important daily tasks. The Opportunity We are looking for a Senior Mechanical Engineer who can take ownership of complex consumer electronics products from a rough idea to reliable mass production. This is not a role for someone who wants to receive a finished specification and execute it. You will help determine the mechanical architecture, identify the highest technical risks, make difficult engineering trade-offs, drive prototypes and validation, work directly with suppliers and tooling partners, and remain accountable for the product through production. You should be comfortable walking into an ambiguous problem and creating structure around it. Our teams are small and the path to key decision makers is short. Strong technical judgment matters here. If you can demonstrate through prototypes, testing, analysis, and engineering fundamentals that there is a better way to build something, you will have the ability - and the responsibility - to influence what gets built. We expect senior engineers to see those details early, understand which ones matter, and drive them to resolution.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering
8+ years of professional mechanical engineering experience developing high-volume consumer electronics or electromechanical consumer products
Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of multiple products from concept through tooling, validation, and mass production
Proven ability to independently lead technically complex mechanical development programs
Deep proficiency in parametric 3D CAD; Creo preferred, with strong NX, SolidWorks, or CATIA experience also considered
Excellent mechanical engineering fundamentals including statics, dynamics, materials, mechanisms, tolerance analysis, structural behavior, and failure mechanics
Deep practical knowledge of injection-molded plastic design and tooling
Strong working knowledge of manufacturing processes including injection molding, die casting, extrusion, stamping, machining, sheet metal, adhesives, and secondary finishing processes
Advanced understanding of GD&T, tolerance stack-up, dimensional inspection, and production drawing requirements
Experience designing mechanisms and electromechanical assemblies for high-volume production
Significant experience integrating PCBAs, sensors, motors, batteries, wiring, and other electronic components into mechanical systems
Strong hands-on prototyping capability and the ability to design useful experiments and test fixtures
Experience defining and executing product reliability and accelerated-life testing
Demonstrated success performing root-cause analysis on difficult mechanical or manufacturing failures
Experience driving DFM/DFA and tooling development directly with suppliers
Direct experience supporting engineering builds and mass-production ramps at overseas factories
Ability to make strong technical recommendations under schedule, cost, and information constraints
Excellent written and verbal communication
Ability to communicate complex technical problems clearly to engineers, designers, suppliers, and senior leadership

Nice To Haves

Passionate and relentless about detail. You notice things other people overlook. A tolerance that does not make sense, a slight change in mechanism feel, an inconsistent gap, an unexplained test result, or a manufacturing assumption without evidence bothers you enough to investigate it. You understand that excellent consumer products are often separated from average ones by hundreds of small engineering decisions. “Good enough” is not automatically good enough.
Curious, self-directed, and current. You find your own answers, propose better approaches, and actively use emerging tools — including AI — to improve research, analysis, and decision-making.
Agile, with a DRI mindset. Our DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) culture means complete ownership of your tasks, projects, and products — and learning fast to adapt to new missions.

Responsibilities

Own the mechanical development of complex consumer electronics products from concept through mass production and post-launch improvement
Define product mechanical architecture and establish the fundamental mechanisms, structures, materials, interfaces, and manufacturing strategy
Translate Industrial Design concepts into technically robust products without unnecessarily compromising design intent
Make engineering trade-offs across performance, reliability, user experience, manufacturing, cost, schedule, and aesthetics
Lead mechanical integration of PCBAs, sensors, motors, batteries, wiring, antennas, displays, and other electromechanical systems
Develop and review production CAD, drawings, GD&T, tolerance stacks, specifications, and critical-to-quality requirements
Identify major technical risks early and create focused prototype and validation plans to retire them
Drive structured engineering analysis including tolerance analysis, DOE, DFMEA, reliability testing, accelerated-life testing, and failure analysis
Build and test prototypes to quickly convert assumptions into evidence
Lead root-cause investigations for difficult mechanical, manufacturing, reliability, and field failures
Drive DFM/DFA directly with component suppliers, tooling vendors, and final assembly manufacturers
Own mechanical readiness through tooling kickoff, T0/T1 iterations, engineering builds, pilot production, validation, and mass-production ramp
Resolve issues directly with domestic and overseas vendors rather than relying solely on intermediaries
Drive continuous improvement in product performance, reliability, assembly, manufacturability, and cost after launch
Raise the engineering standard of the team through rigorous analysis, clear communication, and disciplined decision-making
Travel internationally to suppliers and manufacturing partners as required by product development and launch schedules