About Re:Build Kalamazoo

Re:Build Kalamazoo was founded in 1988 in the heart of Southwest Michigan where creative vision and hard work laid the foundation for a business that continues to grow in a constantly evolving industry. The rigor and attention to detail that comes with designing for the medical industry has awarded us success in supporting both major companies and start-ups from early stage development to commercialization. The same principles apply as we’ve expanded to serve customers in a wide variety of other industries including consumer and industrial goods, electronics, and appliances. Re:Build Kalamazoo's project portfolio is incredibly diverse covering medical, life science, consumer and industrial product categories. Tekna is largely customer focused offering design consulting, contract manufacturing and original equipment manufacturing services. Re:Build Kalamazoo's teams include Design Engineering, Industrial Design, CAD, Procurement, Production and Quality which offers a friendly and supportive team atmosphere.

Re:Build is a family of industrial businesses combining modern enabling technologies, operational superiority, and strategic M&A to build America’s next-generation industrial company. Re:Build leverages deep expertise in operations management and technology to supercharge the performance of its subsidiaries by implementing core technologies across industrial platforms in diversified growth markets. Our goal is to help revitalize the U.S. manufacturing base over the coming decades, creating substantial opportunities for our employees and the communities where we operate.

If you like a fast-paced environment where individuals can stretch and be challenged with a diverse set of projects, we offer a great deal of variety and empower our staff to take on as much responsibility as they can handle, offering a helping hand and experienced-based coaching and the support of a highly competent team. Our goal is to enable our employees to achieve their fullest potential, and through our association with Re:Build, provide avenues for personal and professional growth.

Who we are looking for

We’re looking for a hands-on Principal Industrial Designer who gets excited about figuring out how a product should work, feel, and fit into someone’s day. At Re:Build Kalamazoo, you might be exploring how a clinician handles a medical device on one project and refining the form and materials of a consumer product on the next. You’ll work with clients, engineers, and manufacturing teammates to turn what you learn from users into sketches, models, and prototypes you can put in someone’s hands. You’ll own design work within projects, with scope to collaborate with research, shape the design direction, and guide clients through tough trade-offs as your experience grows.

What you'll get to do

Find the right problem to solve. Work with design and engineering leads to understand what the client needs to accomplish, help scope the project, and decide how to approach the work.
Get close to the people using the product. User-Centered Design. Collaborate with research to understand how people use products, where they run into friction, and what would make the experience better. Draw on market research, ergonomics, and real-world use scenarios.
Make ideas tangible. Explore concepts through sketches, renderings, study models, and CAD. Use prototypes to test ideas, communicate trade-offs, and refine the design as you learn.
Shape how the product looks and feels. Make thoughtful decisions about form, materials, color, and finish that fit the client’s brand and the way the product will be used.
Stay involved as the design gets closer to production. Collaborate with engineering, procurement, production, and quality to work through the details that make a design manufacturable.
Bring clients along. Present concepts and explain the thinking behind your decisions so clients can give useful feedback and move forward with confidence.

What you bring to the team

A bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design, such as a BFA or BSID.