Product Design Engineer

About Trtl

Trtl is a Glasgow-based travel comfort brand on a mission to make journeys better. Our flagship Trtl Pillow reinvented the travel pillow by hiding an engineered support structure inside a soft, wearable fleece — a product that works because textiles and mechanics were designed together. Millions of travellers around the world now fly, ride, and nap better because of it, and we’re building a growing family of travel products that carry the same idea: clever engineering, wrapped in comfort.

As our Product Design Engineer, you’ll bring first-principles, physics-led problem solving to consumer products that people wear and carry. You’ll think about how a support structure carries the weight of a sleeping head, how a hinge or frame behaves after five hundred flights, how a material choice changes stiffness, weight, and cost — and you’ll do it all in service of products that feel effortless to the person using them.

We’re looking for someone with an engineer’s eye for structures, forces, materials and mechanisms.

This is a hands‑on, end‑to‑end role: sketch, model, prototype, test, break, refine, and take designs through to manufacture alongside our textile designers and suppliers.

• Lead mechanical and structural concept development for new travel products and improvements to our existing range, working from user needs back to engineering requirements.
• Apply physics to real design decisions — loads, stresses, stiffness, energy, ergonomics — using first‑principles analysis, calculation, and simulation where it earns its keep.
• Design and detail parts in CAD (e.g. Solid Works or similar), from quick form studies to production‑ready parts and assemblies with proper tolerancing.
• Prototype and test relentlessly — 3D printing, workshop builds, lash‑ups, and rigs — to answer questions early and cheaply.
• Select and specify materials across plastics, foams, frames, and structures, and work with our textile team so hard and soft components are designed as one product, not two halves.
• Take designs into manufacture through DFM, supplier collaboration, sampling, and pre‑production validation, including durability and safety testing.
• Bring evidence — user insight, competitor teardowns, test data — into the team’s decisions, and communicate engineering trade‑offs clearly to non‑engineers.

Essential:

• A degree in Product Design Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering, or similar — the kind of course that teaches you to think like both a designer and an engineer (Glasgow School of Art / University of Glasgow PDE, Strathclyde, Loughborough, Brunel, and similar programmes are exactly the background we mean).
• Roughly 3–5 years’ experience designing and shipping physical consumer products, ideally in fast‑moving consumer hardware — the kind of experience you’d get at companies like Dyson, Shark Ninja, or a design consultancy serving them.
• A physics‑first, first‑principles approach to problem solving — you reach for a free‑body diagram, a quick calc, or a bench test before you reach for an opinion.
• Strong CAD skills with parametric modelling, assemblies, and drawings for manufacture.
• Working knowledge of materials and manufacturing processes — injection moulding, foams, wire forms and springs, fasteners, and how material choice drives performance, feel, and cost.
• A prototyping habit — comfortable in a workshop, quick to build, and honest about what the test results say.
• Genuine consumer focus — you care about how a product feels in someone’s hands (or around their neck) as much as how it performs on a test rig.

Bonus points for:

• Experience with textiles, wearables, or products that combine soft goods with engineered structures.
• Simulation experience (FEA), DFMEA, or structured test planning.
• Experience working directly with Far East or European suppliers, including factory visits and sample reviews.
• An instinct for lightweight, packable design — travel products live and die by weight, packed size, and durability.

You’ll be based at our Glasgow HQ on a hybrid pattern, with regular days in the office and workshop — this is a hands‑on prototyping role, and being around the product (and the team) matters. You’ll join a small, senior product team where your work is visible on shelves and in airports, not buried in a programme plan.

Send us your CV and a short portfolio — we’d love to see one or two projects where you took a physical product from problem to production, and hear about the engineering decisions you made along the way. Tell us about something you built, broke, and made better.

Trtl is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and are happy to discuss flexible working.