Senior Product Engineer - Concept

Vuly Play; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Vuly Play designs and manufactures outdoor play equipment. We’re seeking an engineer who owns product survivability and safety, turning validated concepts into fully engineered products ready for manufacturing partners in Asia and Australia.

You’ll lead structural design, material selection, compliance, tolerancing and DFMs, while addressing warranty and field failures to deliver durable backyard products for a decade.

Qualifications

• Tertiary qualification in Mechanical, Product or Industrial Engineering or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years engineering consumer or outdoor products from prototype to production.
• Strong 3D CAD skills with toleranceing and GD&T.
• Experience with structural analysis, FEA, and physical testing.

Responsibilities

• Travel ~3 months+ per year to Asia for collaboration with R&D on rapid concepting and prototyping.
• Engineer concepts to survive real-world use with structural validation and material selection.
• Detail parts and assemblies for manufacturing methods (moulding, extrusion, fabrication) with proper tolerancing.
• Plan and run physical and simulated testing (structural, fatigue, weathering, compliance) and interpret results to decide readiness.
• Own compliance with playground/product safety standards and prepare documentation for certification.
• Investigate field failures and warranty returns, perform root-cause analysis and implement engineering changes.
• Develop indicative and firm tooling and unit costs with manufacturing partners to protect margins.
• Package drawings and specs for production handover to manufacturing and QA teams.

Skills

3D CAD

SolidWorks

Fusion 360

GD&T

FEA

Manufacturing know-how

Regulatory compliance

Root-cause analysis

Travel readiness

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical/Industrial/Product Engineering

Tools

DFM

CAD analysis tools

Job description

Build the products that have to survive kids, weather and warranty claims

Vuly designs and manufactures outdoor play equipment sold around the world. Every concept our Industrial Design teams create still has to become a product that's safe, certifiable, manufacturable at cost, and strong enough for a decade in someone's backyard. We're looking for the engineer who owns whether it survives contact with a backyard - and who's trusted to make that call.

You'll take validated concepts and prototypes and turn them into fully engineered products - structural design, material selection, compliance, tolerancing and DFM — ready to hand to manufacturing partners across Australia and South-East Asia. You'll also own the engineering integrity of what's already in the range, chasing down field failures and warranty patterns until you know exactly why a part broke and what fixes it for good.

If you want to hand off a render and call it done, this isn't it. If you want to know the failure mode before a customer finds it, read on.

What you'll actually do

Travel the Globe. ~3 months+ a year travel to Hong Kong & China (Shenzhen) to collaborate with key R&D divisions working on rapid concepting & prototyping.

Engineer it to survive. Take concepts and prototypes through structural design, load and stress analysis, and material selection so products meet strength, durability and safety standards under real-world use — not just lab conditions.

Design for how it's actually made. Detail parts and assemblies for the manufacturing method they'll actually use — moulding, extrusion, fabrication — with tolerancing, fastening and assembly sequences that hold up on a factory floor, not just in CAD.

Prove it before it ships. Plan and run physical and simulated testing — structural, fatigue, weathering, compliance — and use the results to validate or rework a design. Interpret test data and CAD analysis (FEA) to make the call on what's ready.

Get it certified. Own compliance against relevant Australian and international playground and product safety standards, prepare the technical documentation that supports certification, and work with test houses and certifying bodies to get products through.

Chase down what breaks. Investigate field failures and warranty returns, run root-cause analysis, and turn findings into engineering changes — feeding lessons back into current products and into the brief for what comes next.

Work the cost and the tooling. Develop indicative and firm tooling costs and unit costs alongside manufacturing partners, and flag where a design choice is going to hurt margin before it's locked in.

Hand it over properly. Package engineering drawings, specifications, test evidence and compliance files so manufacturing and quality teams in KL and Australia can take a product to production without re-deriving your work.

What we're looking for

• Tertiary qualification in Mechanical, Product or Industrial Engineering, or equivalent commercial product-engineering experience
• [3]+ years engineering physical consumer or outdoor products from prototype through to production
• Strong 3D CAD skills (SolidWorks, Fusion 360 or equivalent), including tolerancing and GD&T
• Working knowledge of structural analysis and FEA, and the judgement to know when to trust it and when to test physically
• A working command of emerging tools, including AI, and how to use them to accelerate a project
• Design-for-manufacture experience across moulding, extrusion, tube and metal fabrication
• Familiarity with product safety and compliance standards relevant to playground, furniture or consumer durable goods
• Proven ability to write specifications and reports a downstream team can act on without you in the room, across sites and time zones
• Openness to direct feedback from senior stakeholders at any stage, without losing pace
• Open to regular and consistent travel to key R&D teams in the Asia region
• Experience with manufacturing or supplier partners in South-East Asia
• Root-cause / failure analysis experience on returned or field-failed product
• Exposure to patent or design-registration processes alongside Industrial Design or Legal
• Background in a fast-paced start-up or founder-led environment

How you'll work

We move fast and show work early rather than waiting for certainty. You'll work closely with Industrial Design, manufacturing partners and Legal, and you'll need to hold your own line on safety and structural integrity even when the pressure is to ship faster. Where it counts, we're rigorous: a load calculation gets the same care as a launch deadline.

What we offer

• Direct line to the CEO and genuine ownership of whether a product is fit to ship
• A global business with design and manufacturing teams across Australia, Kuala Lumpur and Asia