Design Manager Jobs in Worcester, MA (NOW HIRING)

Design Manager, Engineering 

Home Environment NPD  |  Needham, MA  |  Shark Brand 

We're looking for a Design Manager to lead the mechanical engineering team behind a new generation of Shark home environment products. This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll own technical direction across your programs from early concept through mass production, manage and develop a team of engineers, and work across a global product development organization spanning Boston, China, and Europe. 

The right candidate builds things. They come in with an appliance design mindset, understand how mechanisms work, and want to figure out problems that don't have obvious answers. They're equally comfortable sketching on a whiteboard and running a DFM review with a tooling supplier. They manage multiple programs simultaneously without losing track of any of them. And they lead people well: honestly, with high standards, and a bias toward getting things done. 

What You'll Do 

• Own design execution from concept through production: CAD, prototyping, DFMEA, tolerance analysis, tooling design, DFM reviews, and validation testing. 

• Design and develop mechanisms. Think through how something moves, where it wears, how it fails, and how to design around it. 

• Build and test prototypes in the lab. Break them, learn from them, iterate. Bring the same expectation to your team. 

• Translate requirements and customer feedback into engineering solutions. When a requirement lands without a clear path forward, figure out the path. 

• Lead DFM and DFA reviews with manufacturing partners, primarily in China. Flag risk early. Drive decisions. 

• Run DFMEA and tolerance stack-up analyses to identify failure modes and design margin before they become production problems. 

• Manage 2-4 direct reports. Set high expectations, develop their skills, give real feedback. This includes hiring as the team and category grow. 

• Manage multiple concurrent programs at different stages of development. Keep priorities clear when timelines compress. 

• Lead engineering communication to executive leadership: progress, risk, and decisions, not just status. 

• Collaborate with cross-functional partners including Product Management, Industrial Design, Operations, Sourcing, and Quality. 

• Travel internationally to manufacturing and development partners in Asia and Europe (approximately 4-8 trips per year). 

What We're Looking For 

Experience 

• 7-10 years of mechanical or product design engineering experience, with a track record of taking products to mass production. 

• Appliance design background strongly preferred. The systems-thinking and mechanical intuition from AD experience translates directly into how we work. 

• 2+ years managing engineers. You know how to hire, develop, and hold people to a high standard without losing them. 

• Hands-on CAD in SolidWorks or Creo at a high level. You lead CAD reviews, not just attend them. 

• Real experience with DFMEA, tolerance analysis, and DFM. Not theoretical. You've used them to make decisions on live programs. 

• Injection-molded plastic part design and tooling experience. 

• Consumer goods or household appliance experience preferred. 

Technical skills 

• Strong mechanism design instincts. You think structurally about how parts interact, where failures happen, and how to design it out. 

• Comfortable in the lab: prototyping, testing, documenting results, and feeding findings back into design. 

• Fluent in high-volume manufacturing processes and the constraints they impose on design. 

• Familiarity with electromechanical systems (motors, sensors, PCBAs). You don't need to own electrical engineering, but you need to design around it. 

Mindset and ways of working 

• Works well under tight deadlines. Programs compress. You stay productive anyway. 

• Comfortable with ambiguity. We don't always have a clean spec or a clear precedent. You approach that as a problem to solve, not a reason to wait. 

• When someone brings you a hard constraint or a late requirement, your first move is figuring out how to meet it, not listing reasons it won't work. 

• Enjoys working with people across functions and geographies. Cross-functional alignment is part of the role, not overhead on top of it. 

• Can manage several concurrent programs without dropping threads. Self-directed and organized. 

• Willing to travel internationally, including Asia and Europe. Passport required. 

Education 

• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Product Design Engineering, or Industrial Design Engineering. Advanced degree not required; strong experience is what matters. 

SharkNinja is a product company. The work that matters most is what shows up on shelves and in customers' homes. If you want to lead a team that builds real things, this is the role.