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Principal Mechanical Engineer

Location: Bay Area, California

Hybrid: 1-2 days in person (SF) per week

Salary: $150-200k / year (range based on experience and equity package) + end of year performance based bonus

Vacation: 4 weeks paid vacation

Additional Benefits: Employee Equity and Platinum Healthcare Package (100% employer paid)

Our Company

Rocky Talkie launched in late 2019 with its signature product, a backcountry radio made for climbers and skiers (view our backstory video here). Since then we have launched multiple best in class products and are well known in the adventure sports industry. We are committed to making easy-to-use and durable radios for use in the backcountry, as well as our best in class customer service. Rocky Talkie has a rapidly growing base of happy customers (see reviews here, and here) in the USA and Canada. Although we initially designed our radio with climbers and skiers in mind, our products have been adopted by a wide variety of outdoor enthusiasts and commercial applications. We have a small, very passionate, and highly motivated team with a deep understanding of our products and our customers. More products are in the works for 2024 and we would love your help in making the next generation of Rocky Talkie products a reality.
Our team is driven every day by the belief that better communication in the backcountry will save lives. As part of this mission, we donate $2 per radio to search and rescue teams around the country. Learn more about our company here.

The Role

We are seeking an entrepreneurial minded, highly creative engineer to join our team. In this role you will lead the design, development, and manufacturing of new products at Rocky Talkie. We are excited to bring our simple, rugged, and activity focused design principles to a variety of new products to improve safety in adventure sports and inject new ideas into an old and outdated 2-way radio industry. We are looking for someone who is eager to lead our engineering team through the full product development cycle; from creating specifications and design documents for new products, to working directly with our manufacturers to execute on the product vision, to final product testing. The role is in-person 1 to 2 days a week in San Francisco, with other days being remote.

In this role, you would lead many aspects of product development at Rocky Talkie and build out processes where necessary. Work directly with the co-founders, engineering team, suppliers, and customers to bring the product vision to life. This role is most suitable for a passionate and experienced mechanical engineer that has brought a major outdoor product from idea to production with strong leadership skills. Rocky Talkie is growing quickly and we will be actively looking to further expand our engineering team with your help. Opportunity for growth is abundant and excellence is recognized and rewarded.


Areas of involvement include:

  • New product specifications and real-use-case testing metrics
  • CAD Development, Prototyping, and DFM/DFA analysis
  • Forming strong partnerships with suppliers domestic and international
  • Implementing robust product testing plans (impact, water, temperature, battery, lifespan, ect)
  • Production release and ongoing production support
  • Bill of material management
  • Drive failure analysis investigations and implement fixes
  • Manage members of our engineering team
  • Hiring of additional contract and full-time engineering help

      Success in this role could look like:

      • You have led the design effort for the next generation of radios at Rocky Talkie, establishing a new framework for product design and development. You have used your skills and industry knowledge to keep Rocky Talkie on top of the outdoor adventure radio market with innovative solutions.
      • You helped build out the Rocky Talkie engineering team and capabilities, bringing more design knowledge in-house and have leveraged contract engineering to fill in gaps in our growing team.
      • You have developed close relationships with our suppliers and built strong specifications and testing requirements to ensure smooth production and revision cycles for our products.

      Required:

      • 5 to 10 yrs experience in product design of consumer electronic devices (enclosure design, environmental testing, DFM)
      • BS/MS/PhD Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent technical degree
      • 3D CAD design for injection molded parts (Solidworks or equivalent) andgeometric dimensioning and tolerancing
      • Experience with a variety of materials and manufacturing methods (plastics, elastomers, sheet metal, casting, etc.)
      • Experience with international manufacturing
      • Outdoor sports enthusiast
      • Leadership experience

      Desired:

      • Outdoor or fitness product experience
      • Start-up or small company experience
      • Rugged waterproof enclosure design (IP68) 
      • Acoustics and acoustic enclosure design experience
      • Thermal and vibrational analysis
      • Radio or RF device experience/interest

      Apply: 

      Submit your application here!

      or email product@rockytalkie.com with the following: Resume, Brief introduction and your interest in the role, tell us how you came across this job. 

          We look forward to hearing from you!

          - Rocky Talkie Product Team

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