Senior Product Design Engineer

About the Role 

As our Senior Product Design Engineer, you will do more than design products; you will redesign how we design them. This role owns the remapping of our product design process around speed to solution: getting from a customer problem to a prototype in hand, and from prototype to a validated, production-ready design, in a fraction of the time it takes today. The emphasis is on adopting and integrating design automation tools that already exist, evaluating and deploying commercially available CAD, configurator, simulation, and rapid-prototyping capability rather than building every tool from scratch, and customizing only where off-the-shelf capability falls short. You will still own hands-on design, prototyping, testing, and design modification recommendations for thermal products and systems. 

Watlow understands that you can’t do your best work if you don’t have a real understanding of the Watlow business as well as strong relationships with team members from across the organization.  At Watlow you will have many opportunities, both formally and informally, to build and maintain the cross-functional knowledge and relationships that you need for a successful and rewarding career. 

In the role of Sr. Product Design Engineer you would be located at our Hillsboro,OR facility.

Your Key Responsibilities 

• Map the current product design process end to end, including inputs, handoffs, decision gates, and cycle times, then redesign it around speed to solution by eliminating rework, waiting, and duplicate data entry 

• Evaluate, select, and implement existing design automation tools that shorten the path from customer requirement to prototype and released design, including CAD configurators, design tables, rules-based drawing and BOM generation, simulation, and templated manufacturing documentation 

• Get the most out of the tools we already own before building anything new, configuring native capability in our CAD, PLM, and ERP systems and closing gaps with light customization rather than custom development 

• Establish and maintain the design rules, standards, trade-off curves, and reusable libraries that make automated configuration possible for standard and modified-standard product 

• Create and modify designs and manufacturing documentation for new parts and assemblies, applying independent design judgment and proposing modifications where appropriate 

• Compress the build-test-learn loop by using rapid prototyping, in-house and vendor additive capability, and simulation-led design to reach a working solution in days rather than weeks, running tests, inspections, and evaluations, and verifying and validating the procedures and standards behind them 

• Create test reports and trade-off curves, interpreting results and feeding findings back into the design rules so the same problem is solved once and reused everywhere 

• Translate customer needs into actionable production instructions, identifying opportunities to improve or streamline production procedures in the process 

• Define and track the metrics that prove the new process works: time to first prototype, design cycle time, quote-to-drawing turnaround, first-pass yield on released documentation, and percentage of designs generated from automated configurations 

• Partner with manufacturing, quality, sales, and IT to deploy new tools and workflows, and coach engineers and designers on adopting them 

• Troubleshoot and repair problems with machines or controls, and drive procedural change into production 

Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Manufacturing, Electrical Engineering, other relevant engineering field, or a two-year degree with equivalent hands-on design experience 

• 5+ years of product design experience, including ownership of designs from concept through production release 

• Demonstrated experience putting existing design automation tools to work, such as parametric and configurable modeling, design tables, CAD templates and libraries, configurators, or rules-driven drawing and BOM generation, including selecting and deploying vendor tools rather than developing them in house 

• Working knowledge of GD&T, DFM/DFA, and engineering change and documentation control 

• Track record of mapping and improving an engineering or manufacturing process and delivering a measurable reduction in prototype or design cycle time 

• Hands-on rapid prototyping experience, including additive manufacturing, machine shop work, or quick-turn vendor prototyping 

• Ability to influence without authority and to bring engineering, manufacturing, and commercial teams along on a process change 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience with SolidWorks (or equivalent) configurations, design automation add-ins, or DriveWorks-style configurators 

• Experience with thermal products, heaters, sensors, or controls 

• Familiarity with PLM/ERP integration and automated release workflows 

• Lean, Six Sigma, or value-stream mapping experience