Senior Mechanical Design Engineer - Product Development
Listed on 2026-09-04
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Engineering
Mechanical Engineer, Product Engineer, Engineering Design & Technologists, Quality Engineering
Senior Mechanical Design Engineer - New Product Development
Peoria, Illinois
Senior Mechanical Design Engineer – New Product Development
New Product Development | Peoria, IL | Full-Time
Compensation: $95,000 – $145,000
On New Product Development, you design the powder handling equipment that becomes Rheo's standard product line — the equipment pharmaceutical manufacturers rely on to make life-saving medicine. If that kind of ownership excites you, keep reading.
Rheo Engineering builds advanced powder handling equipment for the pharmaceutical industry, designed and manufactured on-site to an exacting standard. New Product Development is where those products begin — where a concept becomes a validated, production-ready design that defines what Rheo brings to market.
We're looking for a Senior Design Engineer to be the technical backbone of that work. You'll have your own product designs while overseeing the quality of other assigned NPD design engineer's output — leading design reviews, running the engineering change process, and mentoring the engineers around you. This is a technical leadership role with room to grow.
What You'll Do- Perform CAD modeling on moderate-to-complex assemblies and components
- Serve as a technical point of contact on your products — communicating directly on technical matters and leading client training and webinars
- Own product maintenance, product testing and validation, and product family standardization
- Lead formal design reviews and drive decisions to closure, with accountability for FMEA execution, prototype testing, and approval submittal sign-off
- Own the engineering change process — triage ECRs, verify and close out ECOs, and create basis-of-design documentation
- Ensure the accuracy and completeness of Design Engineer work across testing, FEA, component specification, customer drawings, and documentation
- Collaborate with controls & automation, fabrication, assembly, and manufacturing engineering to resolve design issues and ensure producibility
- Source and qualify vendors alongside purchasing; review vendor drawings and conduct technical evaluations
- Mentor Design Engineers, build SME expertise, and provide performance-review input for team members
- Generate engineering standards and design calculators, and administer the CAD environment
- Resolve technical obstacles early, ensure standards are followed, and assign and distribute tasks across the team
- Participate in internal and external FATs, new-hire interviews, and feasibility assessments, and support system integration, quality activities (CAPAs/SCARs), sales, and Customer Care
- Product designs under your oversight are thoroughly validated and transition smoothly from development into production with minimal issues
- The Design Engineers you mentor show measurable growth in technical capability, independence, and design quality over time
- Cross-functional teams — fabrication, assembly, controls & automation, purchasing, marketing — view you as a reliable, responsive technical partner
- Technical obstacles on your projects are identified and resolved early, avoiding downstream schedule or quality impacts
- Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related engineering discipline
- Someone who embodies Rheo's core values:
Bold Humility, Reliability, Competence, Collaboration, Initiative - Significant professional experience in mechanical design engineering, with demonstrated ownership of complex design work from concept through production release
- Proficiency in Autodesk Inventor or equivalent 3D CAD
- Experience with FEA software tools
- Proven track record of producing and reviewing engineering drawings, models, and calculations to a high standard of quality
- Experience leading or facilitating design reviews and managing engineering change processes (ECR/ECO)
- History of mentoring junior engineers and contributing to team development
- Experience across the product development lifecycle — prototyping, testing, and validation
- Technical ownership — you take personal accountability for engineering quality and see problems through to resolution
- Cross-functional leadership — you coordinate across engineering,…
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