Lead Mechanical Engineer

About the role

You will lead a small mechanical engineering team at a company developing electric power tools for professional contractors who punish tools daily on jobsites. You will split your time between the hardest design problems (gearboxes that survive drops, housings that seal out dust, thermal paths that keep motors alive) and the leadership that keeps five engineers shipping together. Your team succeeds when tools launch on schedule, survive brutal jobsite validation testing, and come back for the next program stronger and faster. You will lead a small mechanical team technically, assigning work, reviewing designs, and unblocking engineers while staying hands-on yourself. Your leadership will be measured in both the team's output quality and its growth.

What you will achieve

• Ship complete power tool platforms through your team on committed timelines, from concept sketches through production launch and into sustaining.
• Own the most demanding designs personally, such as the transmission or the structural housing, setting the quality standard by example rather than by review comments alone.
• Build a design review rhythm where every critical part receives analysis and peer scrutiny before tooling is ordered, eliminating late discoveries that cost schedule.
• Develop each team member deliberately with stretch assignments and direct, honest feedback, growing at least one engineer toward senior-level independence per year.
• Manage technical risk actively with a living risk register, so surprises surface early when they are cheap to fix instead of late when they are expensive.

What you will bring

Must-haves

• 7 or more years of mechanical design experience with products shipped to production.
• Prior experience leading engineers technically, formally or informally, with shipped results attributable to the team.
• Strong fundamentals in mechanism design, structural analysis, gear design, and DFM for high-volume processes.
• Ability to plan mechanical work across a multi-part program and sequence it with realistic dependencies.
• Hands-on attitude: you prototype, test, tear down failures, and get dirty alongside your team.
• BS in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with high-volume plastic part design including tooling considerations.
• Familiarity with drop, vibration, dust, and water ingress testing for rugged products.
• Background in motor-driven products, power transmission, or battery systems.
• Knowledge of ergonomic design for professional hand tools.