Product Design Engineer (Consumer Electronics) at Proto-Town (Lockhart)
Proto-Town· Lockhart·
Role details
Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time
Job description
About the role
We're looking for a Product Design Engineer who can shape how a product looks and feels, and then build the prototype that proves it works. The design work and the engineering work belong to the same person here: you. If you like owning something from a rough idea through to a working object a person can pick up and use, this is that job. There is no team to hand this off to. You're starting from a blank slate and you own everything between that and a unit someone can hold and turn on. You'll have real input on what we build, not just how we build it.
What you'll do
- Develop the user experience and physical design of the product: form, proportion, ergonomics, materials, and finish
- Take concepts to functional prototypes: CAD, 3D printing, PCB design, machining, fixturing, hand fabrication, and assembly
- Source and integrate parts and tools
What we're looking for
- Design judgment: a point of view about why one form factor, radius, or weight feels better than another, and the ability to explain it
- 3+ years designing physical consumer products that shipped, or an equivalent portfolio of built work
- Strong CAD skills in [SolidWorks / Creo / NX / Fusion 360]
- Hands-on prototyping ability: you're comfortable on a lathe, mill, printer, and soldering iron
- Electrical self-sufficiency: you can spec parts, wire up a dev board, lay out a simple PCB, and debug your own hardware with a multimeter and a scope
- Enough coding skill to make a prototype behave: Python, C/C++, Arduino
Why work at Proto-Town
- Culture: Described as a “resurrected spirit of experimentation” with a “frontier” mentality. The environment is deeply hands-on, hardware-first, and driven by builders rather than software optimizers. One employee described it as “not just LinkedIn and fake buttons that you’re clicking.”
- Work environment: On-site living is common (retrofitted shipping containers, old school buses, inflatable office buildings). The remoteness fosters deep focus and rapid iteration. Safety gets high attention (security checkpoint, emergency protocols).
- Remote/hybrid policy: Not explicitly stated, but the nature of the work (physical hardware, on-site testing, nuclear reactors) heavily implies on-site, hands-on presence is required. Likely not remote-friendly.
- Notable perks: Access to cutting-edge hardware infrastructure, proximity to elite founders and investors, ability to influence the physical build-out of an entire new town from scratch, and the chance to be part of a project that has been compared to the Manhattan Project in its speed and ambition.
- Engineering culture: Direct, gritty, and high-autonomy. You’ll likely be working on real physical systems—robots, reactors, drones, energy storage—rather than web dashboards. The talent pool includes ex-Waymo, Neuralink, and Tesla engineers.