Industrial Designer Plus Career

U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix

Seven Cycles Industrial Designer PLUS

This is one of Seven's "Framebuilder-Plus" roles. It's a hybrid job where you both design products and get to build custom frames, too. Read the details below to learn more about what Framebuilder+ means.

Industrial Designer Role Summary

If you're excited about product design, enjoy being part of an experienced design team, are very proficient with SolidWorks, and like working with your hands, this may be your perfect job.

We design nearly every element of our bike frames in-house, from our dropouts to our head tube badges and everything in between. We're fairly unique as a small company that way. We think and rethink every part of the frame every day to find better ways to work. Your Industrial Design job at Seven is to shepherd those endless designs and refinements through all phases from concept to commercialization.

This role includes ensuring product safety and durability through SolidWorks modeling, real-world fatigue testing, and extensive product testing.

Industrial Design at Seven also means working on design for manufacture and collaborating with our tool and die maker on fixture development. We can't make beautifully accurate frames without constant improvements to our fixturing, jigs, and tooling.

As an Industrial Designer on our highly experienced engineering team, you'll work with Seven's founder and sometimes two others to co-develop and execute some of the most progressive designs in the industry.

What do "Designer+" and "Framebuilder+" mean?

These are terms Seven developed to help describe role versatility and learning opportunities at Seven. We are a small business, so every day, each of us works in multiple roles. If that doesn't excite you, we're probably not the company for you. But, if the idea of learning constantly and doing multiple engaging tasks with sometimes disparate skills makes you nod in approval, let's talk.

In the case of the Industrial Designer + Framebuilder role, you'll spend about 50% of your time in each role. The percentages change seasonally and as projects and customer demands ebb and flow. If you're unsure about whether this would be a good career for you, some benefits of framebuilding as part of the Design Engineer role include:

Knowing the product you're designing: It's one thing to look at a beautifully modeled part on a computer screen. It's quite another to machine that part and see it welded into a customer's dream frame. This is one of the best ways to learn the true meaning of design for manufacture.
Appreciate all the jobs: By working within multiple aspects of the company, you better understand and appreciate the challenges that your co-workers face.
Help where needed: As a small company, when one person is away, the rest ot the team covers. We expect this attitude from everyone. Knowing the framebuilding role makes you a more valuable co-worker.

Framebuilders at Seven quickly become some of the best builders in the world. Within three years, you will have built more custom frames than most builders fabricate in a lifetime. Your framebuilding value will be second to none.

You work with the most experienced team in the industry. You'll learn from a builder mentor team with more than 150 years of combined framebuilding experience. Your learning opportunity is unlike any other in the industry.

At the end of the day, our most fundamental job is to deliver perfect framesets to riders. Every single person at Seven helps make this happen.

Learn more about the Framebuilder role.

Required Experience

SolidWorks: You are proficient in SolidWorks and have at least two years of experience with part modeling, assembly creation, production machining drawing generation, and some CAM experience.
Cycling: You love cycling and have a particular interest in high-end performance products.

Ideal Qualifications

Industrial design degree or mechanical engineering degree.
Experience designing bike products.
Product development experience in the performance sports industry.
CNC programming and operation experience.
3D printing expertise.
Material fatigue testing experience.

Design Responsibilities

Work style:

Our designers work primarily independently but also as part of a four-person design and engineer group to improve current methods.
Work alongside — and take direction from — Seven's founder and design lead to implement and commercialize our next-generation frameset designs.
Professionalism: You understand what it means that your team counts on you. You are dependable. You do what you say you'll do. You communicate clearly.
Innate interest in keeping up on meaningful industry innovations and trends.

Product and industrial design:

Product safety: Ensure that we've thoroughly tested our designs for safety factors and durability.
Continuous improvement: Iterate Seven's existing designs to make them better, more effective, and easier to implement.
New designs: Work on Seven's next generation of frames.
Leverage SolidWorks to make complex, fully customized frames easier and faster to design and build.
Support our industrial engineering team with fixture and tooling design.
Manage our 3D printing system for prototyping and fixturing.
Manage our in-house fatigue testing program for materials, frames, and components.

Framebuilding Responsibilities

Building frames from raw tubing through to completed frames ready for final bike assembly — with the exception of frame welding.
Participating in Seven's team goals for safety, accuracy, quantity, and continuous improvement.
Equipment and machine maintenance.

Compensation: Competitive wage and benefits relative to other small businesses. Benefits include partial health insurance coverage, flex time, paid time off, a retirement plan, bike industry benefits, and more. This role can be hourly or salaried depending on your experience level, and the skill set you bring to Seven.

Location: On-site at Seven Cycles in Watertown, MA.

Apply for this Job

If this role sounds like what you've been dreaming about, apply for the job here. Do not call us. Do not contact us at other Seven email addresses. If you have questions or want more information, email us using this form, and include your resume and cover letter.

About Seven Cycles, Inc.

We started Seven Cycles 26 years ago. Not only has our founding team been building bikes longer than just about any other multiperson handmade framebuilding company in the United States, but we are also the largest custom bicycle builder in the world. We've won numerous awards and have countless industry firsts to our credit.

Our mission is to build bikes that elevate what riders think is possible.

Seven Cycles is an equal opportunity employer. We provide competitive salaries and benefits relative to other small businesses. We support work-life balance and healthy mental and physical working conditions. Seven fosters a fast-paced, values-driven environment, placing particular focus on our employees, customer satisfaction, product quality, and innovation.