Product Design Engineer

Hark; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Hark is seeking a Product Design Engineer in San Jose, California, to lead mechanical design for AI-powered devices. You'll be involved in the full product development cycle, from concept sketches to production. This role requires deep CAD fluency and experience with consumer hardware.

Ideal candidates will have over 7 years of relevant experience and a mechanical engineering degree. Hark offers a competitive salary ranging from $120,000 to $300,000 annually with further benefits based on skills and experience.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience shipping consumer hardware from concept to mass production.
• Deep fluency in mechanical CAD, strong GD&T, and tolerance analysis.
• Experience designing for high-volume manufacturing processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead mechanical design of core hardware from concept to production.
• Define specifications, tolerances, and material selections for CAD models.
• Collaborate with teams to unify design considerations and build prototypes.

Skills

Mechanical CAD

Tolerance analysis

Design for Manufacturability

Hands-on prototyping

Education

Bachelor's in mechanical or product design engineering

Masters in mechanical engineering or related

Tools

NX (CAD software)

Statistical software (JMP)

Job description

About Hark

Hark is an artificial intelligence company building advanced, personalized intelligence. One that is proactive, multimodal, and capable of interacting with the world through speech, text, vision, and persistent memory.

We're pairing that intelligence with next-generation hardware to create a universal interface between humans and machines. While today's AI largely operates through chat boxes and decade-old devices, Hark is focused on what comes next: agentic systems that interact naturally with people and the real world.

To get there, we're developing multimodal models and next-generation AI hardware together - designed from the ground up as a single, unified interface for a new era of intelligent systems.

About the Role

We're hiring a Product Design Engineer to help shape the physical form of our AI-powered devices. You'll work across the full product development cycle — concept sketches, CAD modeling, prototyping, and DFM — collaborating with electrical and ML engineers to design enclosures and mechanisms that accommodate complex sensor arrays, thermal systems, and compact compute modules.

Responsibilities

• Lead mechanical design of core hardware (enclosures, structural components, flex assemblies, interconnects) from concept to production
• Convert industrial design intent into reliable, manufacturable, and precise engineering solutions, maintaining product vision and structural/functional performance
• Define and own specifications, tolerances, material selections, and 3D CAD across processes like injection molding, die casting, stamping, and CNC machining
• Drive Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA) with manufacturing partners from early concept through production builds
• Use tolerance analysis, FEA, and DOE's to validate designs and resolve failure modes pre-assembly
• Collaborate with Industrial Design, Electrical Engineering, Acoustic Engineering, Reliability & Operations to unify design considerations (functionality, thermal management, human factors, reliability, cost, and aesthetics)
• Build functional prototypes in-house and travel to manufacturing facilities to support builds and resolve issues

Requirements

• Bachelor's in mechanical or product design engineering (or similar)
• 7+ years shipping consumer hardware from concept to mass production
• Deep fluency in mechanical CAD (NX preferred), strong GD&T, tolerance analysis, dimensional management, and statistical software (JMP)
• Comfortable with hands‑on prototyping and external partners
• Hands‑on experience designing for high-volume manufacturing (injection molding, die casting, stamping, CNC machining)
• Proven ability to balance mechanical, electrical, and industrial design trade-offs at the system level
• Direct experience collaborating with external suppliers and contract manufacturers, including onsite factory support
• Comfortable in early‑stage product development with ambiguous constraints and open solution space

Bonus Qualifications

• Masters in mechanical engineering, product design engineering, mechatronics engineering or similar
• Experience in new product architecture & shipping first generation devices in a lead role
• Experience with in-field failure analysis
• Experience integrating complex sensors including microphones & cameras
• Experience integrating displays, audio modules etc.

Compensation

The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $120,000 - $300,000 annually.

The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.