Senior Tooling Development Engineer

Join Milwaukee Electronics - 70 Years of Innovation & Excellence

At Milwaukee Electronics, acceleration isn't just what we do; it's how we grow. As an electronics manufacturing services provider with more than 70 years of innovation, we partner with customers to turn ideas into reality. We invest in our people through learning, advancement, and a culture that truly cares. If you're looking for meaningful work, strong teamwork, and room to go beyond, you'll feel at home here.

We operate as One Team, Take Ownership, Seek to Serve, and Go Beyond to deliver quality, operational excellence, and scalable manufacturing solutions in a fast-paced, technology-driven environment.

Summary

The Senior Tooling Development Technician is responsible for the end-to-end design, fabrication, and commissioning of fixtures, pallets, jigs, and custom tooling used across all manufacturing, assembly, and test processes at our Milwaukee EMS facility. Operating as a team of one, this role partners with New Product Introduction (NPI), Manufacturing Engineering, Test Engineering, and Program Management to identify tooling needs, scope work, and deliver solutions that directly improve manufacturing efficiency, quality, and capacity.

This is a uniquely hands-on role that combines mechanical design with direct in-house fabrication. The Senior Tooling Development Technician designs tooling in Solid Works and fabricates it in-house using CNC and manual machine tools, sheet metal equipment, 3D printers, and a full complement of fabrication tools. Where most roles conclude at drawing release, this role extends through fabrication, build, and validation on the shop floor.

Total design ownership belongs to this position: surrounding teams provide input, but the Senior Tooling Development Technician makes the final technical call.

This role reports to the Engineering Manager.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

The essential functions of this position include, but are not limited to, the following:

Technical Ownership & Decision-Making

• Serve as the senior technical voice on tooling design and fabrication at the Milwaukee facility, representing tooling in cross-functional discussions with engineering, operations, quality, and program leadership.
• Own assigned tooling projects end-to-end - from intake and scoping through design, fabrication, commissioning, and post-release support.
• Make final technical decisions on tooling design, weighing input from NPI, Manufacturing Engineering, Test Engineering, Program Management, and production personnel.

Design & Problem Solving

• Develop creative, often non-standard mechanical solutions to ambiguous tooling and fixturing problems brought forward by NPI, Manufacturing Engineering, Test Engineering, and production teams.
• Analyze design trade-offs across cost, manufacturability, lead time, durability, and end-use functionality to select the right approach for each project.
• Apply first-principles technical judgment - including material behavior, tolerance stack-ups, mechanism design, and failure mode analysis - to tooling that must perform reliably in a production environment.
• Design with the end user in mind. Shop floor operators and technicians are key stakeholders for every tool delivered; successful tooling makes their work easier, faster, and more accurate while reducing physical and cognitive strain.
• Iterate on designs through prototyping, fitting, and field feedback to converge on robust final solutions.

Tooling Design

• Design fixtures, pallets, jigs, and custom tooling in Solid Works to support PCB assembly, box-build assembly, electrical and functional test, and mechanical processes across the facility.
• Translate PCBA design data (Gerber, ODB++, .tgz, .asc, .emn/.emp) into accurate 2D and 3D representations to support fixture design, using tools such as Gerb View and Solid Works.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Collaborate closely with Test Engineering to develop test fixture mechanicals - including but not limited to PCBA/DUT locating features, tooling-pin selection, pogo pin layout, single- or dual-sided board access, test actuation mechanism, and enclosures for test equipment.
• Partner with NPI Engineering during new product introductions to define and deliver the tooling required to bring new processes online.
• Support Manufacturing Engineering with fixture refurbishment, modification, and updates as products evolve over their lifecycle.

In-House Fabrication

• Program and operate CNC equipment to fabricate tooling components directly from CAD models, using CAM software (Solid Works CAM), manual G-code/M-code programming, and Haas CNC mill operation.
• Fabricate completed designs in MEC's machine shop using a full complement of manual and additive equipment - including manual mill and lathe; shear and manual press brake for sheet metal; FDM (Bambulab) and SLA (Formlabs) 3D printers; bandsaws, drill presses, tapping machine, hydraulic knockout punches, surface grinder, and a wide range of hand tools.
• Produce one-off mechanical…