Principal Industrial Designer

About the role

As a Principal Industrial Designer at Kids2, you will design engaging, consumer‑centered products that support developmental play and bring our brands to life across multiple categories worldwide. Using consumer insights, storytelling, and strong design execution, you will help create meaningful product experiences through thoughtful features, color, material, and form. This role requires a highly creative, strategic, and collaborative design leader who can guide projects from concept through production while partnering cross‑functionally with Engineering, Marketing, Packaging, Product Management, and global manufacturing teams.

• Create drawings, sketches, and renderings to convey new concepts and ideas to engineering, marketing, packaging, and management.
• Convey the “story” of how concepts were developed and create pitches for product or collection ideas with storyboards, trend and mood boards, drawings, sketches, and high‑quality renderings or animations.
• Interpret and apply both trends and insights into excellent forward‑thinking product design.
• Create 3D mock‑ups and kit‑bashed models to communicate scale and function.
• Create 3D surface CAD to communicate design intent, evaluate CAD from vendors to ensure adherence to design vision, and generate 3‑D‑printed models during the process.
• Drive projects from inception to completion while balancing the design intent with constraints such as cost, manufacturing processes, and stakeholder inputs.
• Prepare control drawings, color specs, and descriptions for the construction of prototypes and tooling models.
• Create marketing materials and displays to aid in conveying and promoting new ideas internally and to customers.
• Run creative brainstorming sessions, build stories, essence, and play patterns for our portfolio of brands as they come to life in toys.
• Participate in formal and informal reviews and brainstorming sessions to generate new product ideas.
• Work with outside vendors to supplement internal development resources.
• Support pre‑production efforts, including approvals of tooling drawings, material samples, and pre‑production product samples.
• Travel to Asia to work with designers and manufacturers twice a year.
• Build understanding for the target consumer, influenced by kid usability and parent expectations and needs.
• Perform other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

• 5 years of experience in the design field, including internships or co‑ops.
• Proven experience bringing consumer products from concept through production.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating excellence in form development, storytelling, innovation, visualization, and consumer‑centered design.
• Experience working with global manufacturing partners and cross‑functional product development teams.
• Experience mentoring designers or leading creative initiatives.
• Experience utilizing AI‑driven creative tools, visualization platforms, or workflow‑enhancing technologies.

• Undergraduate degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Toy Design, or Entertainment Design.
• Attention to detail, excellent aesthetic sense for form and color, and high levels of cooperation and teamwork.
• Strong visualization skills: 2‑D sketching.
• Basic understanding of business strategy, manufacturing materials and processes, and model‑making.
• Strong time‑management skills.

• Proficient in Adobe Creative Suite, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. (required)
• Digital sketching software – Sketchbook Pro (required)
• Basic Microsoft Office – Word, Excel, PowerPoint (required)
• Surface modeling software – Alias, Solid Works (preferred)
• Parametric modeling software – Creo (optional)
• 3‑D visualization software – Bunk Speed, Key Shot (optional)
• 3‑D printer experience (optional)

While performing the duties of this job, the team member is regularly required to talk or hear, sits frequently, and uses hands flexibly. The role may involve reaching with hands and arms, stooping, kneeling, crouching, or crawling. The employee may need to stand, walk, and use taste or smell occasionally. The team member must regularly lift or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift or move up to 25–50 pounds.

Vision abilities required include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.

The position is based in a general office environment. Kids2 offers competitive pay, flexible hours, generous benefits, team member activities, philanthropic efforts, and company‑wide awards and recognition.