Senior Gear Design Engineer

Family-owned for more than a century, our client pioneered mass-produced worm gearing in America — and they're still the name engineers specify when a worm drive has to survive the most demanding conditions in steel, power generation, and material handling. Now they're modernizing. They're moving their design capability into new markets — power-generation and turbine drives, mixer drives, and custom applications — and they want a senior designer who'll bring fresh thinking to a legacy craft, not just maintain it.

This is a hands-on design role, and the timing matters: one of the team's veteran designers retires this fall, so the right person can ramp up alongside him and absorb decades of hard-won worm-gear knowledge before he's gone.

• Design custom worm gearsets and enclosed gear drives from customer specification to shop-ready package
• Work gear geometry, rating, and thermal/efficiency analysis for worm and helical gearing
• Execute dimensional layouts, bearing L10 life calculations, and shaft/housing/seal design
• Produce clean manufacturing drawings and BOMs with proper GD&T for the shop floor
• Work elbow-to-elbow with machinists on the floor to refine designs and solve production issues (roughly 30% of your week)
• Reverse-engineer and re-rate legacy gearboxes for rebuild and upgrade programs
• Support customers and sales on custom applications — mostly by phone and email, with occasional local visits on special projects
• Help modernize how the team designs: calculation methods, tooling, and standard-product configuration

• BSME preferred; deep, demonstrable design experience can stand in for the degree
• Around 7 years of hands-on gear or power-transmission design experience

• Hands-on worm gear design experience — this is the heart of the role
• Design of enclosed gear drives / speed reducers: housings, bearings, shafts, seals, lubrication
• A solid command of gear geometry, rating, and bearing-life fundamentals
• Proficiency in 2D and 3D CAD (AutoCAD and Creo/Pro-E preferred)

• Familiarity with AGMA rating practice (e.g., AGMA 6034 for worm gearing, 2001/2101 for helical) and GD&T (ASME Y14.5)
• Hob and cutting-tool design for worm wheels and gears
• Breadth across helical, spur, bevel, or planetary gearing
• Experience taking a product line into new markets (power gen, turbines, mixer drives)
• Modern gear-analysis or PLM tooling (e.g., KISSsoft, Romax) or design automation

A profitable, growing 100+ year company entering new markets — real greenfield design work, not just rebuilds. Direct influence — leadership is actively asking for fresh ideas and new technology, not the status quo. A genuinely hands-on seat: roughly 70% design / 30% on the floor, where your drawings become hardware. The stability of a business that's stayed independent for generations, where you're a name, not a number — plus strong benefits and a 401(k) match.

Our client is an equal opportunity employer. This position is on-site in the Cleveland, OH area.