Opportunity
The primary responsibility of the Staff Engineer in our Wellness Products Group is to deliver innovative consumer products as part of a highly collaborative cross-functional team. The Staff Engineer must combine strong technical skills, collaborative leadership, creativity, and business acumen to bring complex system products from initial concept through to production.
We are looking for someone who:
Leverages creative problem solving to design innovative, cost effective, and functional Wellness bathing products that delight customers and represent the Kohler brand. Brings a positive approach and collaborates with cross functional teams including marketing, program management, industrial design, and manufacturing operations to deliver products on time, within budget. Is passionate about innovation and consistently searches for opportunities to create transformative products. Has demonstrated experience in system engineering integration. Candidates with electromechanical experience integrating pumping, heating, sensor, disinfection, or functional lighting technologies are preferred. Utilizes broad range material and manufacturing process knowledge including thermoforming, casting, injection molding, extrusion, metal fabrication, etc. Is familiar coordinating work across regions and cultures as part of a global engineering organization.
Specific Responsibilities
Partner with Product Marketing and Industrial Design to develop a product specification using consumer research, market data, and sales feedback.Establish system-level requirements of a complex product family and collaborate with internal or external engineers on subsystem component design and integration.Study competitive products and understand current warranty metrics to benchmark against new product designs.Provide high-level feasibility analysis on initial product concepts.Coordinate concept development across mechanical, electrical, and software teams in multiple global regions. Own technical requirements and engineering execution.Be the primary engineering representative with the cross-functional team and leadership. Clearly and effectively present (both written and orally) to their project teams and/or management as appropriate.Lead growth of key Wellness areas of expertise to enable product and market leadershipEnsure best practices are applied in a smart fashion to understand and optimize system design: FEA, CFD, Design of Experiments, etc.Leverage our network of prototyping and test lab capabilities to create physical prototypes to validate product features.Utilize tools such as DFMEA and engineering design critiques to identify and eliminate or mitigate high risk failure modes.Work with our internal manufacturing team as well as suppliers to balance cost, performance, quality, and project timing.Lead project CAD model and drawing strategy, partnering with global CAD and engineering partners to perform engineering calculations, tolerance stacks, and develop detailed technical drawings, incorporating engineering standards and GD&T.Optimize design using DfM (Design for Manufacturing) principles to ensure reliable, stable, and efficient mass production.Ensure regulatory compliance through careful product verification test planning.Create reliability / design test plans for each new product design requirements, lead qualification and reliability testing on sub systems and components, support testing activities in internal lab, supplier’s lab or 3rd party labSupport manufacturing ramp up by providing on-site feedback during pre-production builds.