Product Design Engineer — Grounded
Detroit, MI (in-person)
About Grounded
Grounded is a 25-person Detroit-based startup building modular electric platforms for specialty vehicles. We take cab chassis from OEMs like Ford and Harbinger and build configurable vehicle systems on top, serving mobile healthcare, RVs, command centers, food and beverage, pet care, and more. Our customers include Colgate, Nokia, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and Portland PD. We've raised ~$5M in VC funding and are shipping vehicles in market today.
We also build our own software: a mobile app, fleet dashboard, and onboard computer system that lets customers monitor and control vehicle systems remotely. We design, fabricate, and assemble everything in-house at our facility in Corktown.
The Role
We're hiring a Product Design Engineer to own the heart of our product: the module library. Every Grounded vehicle — mobile health clinic, food service van, command unit, adventure van — is assembled from a library of engineered interior modules, configured to the mission. That library is the product, and this role designs, models, and maintains it.
You'll work directly with our CPO at the intersection of mechanical engineering and product design: sourcing best-in-class components, developing new modules, packaging vehicle layouts for customer proposals, and producing the visuals that sell them. What you design gets fabricated in-house and installed in real vehicles — and it feeds our product configurator, so the library you build becomes something customers configure themselves.
What you'd actually do
Design and 3D model interior modules — cabinetry, medical and food equipment integrations, mounts — and own the module library as the single source of truth
Scout the market for best-in-class components for the library stack: power systems, refrigeration, commercial equipment, hardware. Compare specs, weight, power draw, certifications, and cost, and make the pick defensible
Develop vehicle configurations and packaging layouts for customer proposals, validating fit, weight, and power budgets
Produce renderings and visualizations for sales, proposals, and marketing
Build parametric versions of modules for our product configurator, working alongside the software team
Support prototype builds on the floor and fold what you learn back into the library
What we're looking for
Degree in mechanical engineering, industrial design, or both
Strong CAD fluency and comfort moving between tools (Onshape, NX, or similar)
Rendering and visualization skills (KeyShot, Blender, or similar)
Serious product research skills: you can survey a component category you've never touched, cut through spec sheets and vendor claims, and land on the right part fast
Interest in parametric or computational design — you don't need to be a software engineer, but you should like working with them
A bias toward buildable: DFM instincts, real materials, real tolerances
Startup fit: comfortable with ambiguity, you own outcomes rather than tasks
Nice-to-haves
Aluminum fabrication, composite, or sheet metal knowledge
Vehicle or furniture industry experience
Grasshopper or scripting experience
Compensation
Competitive base salary + meaningful equity in Grounded + comprehensive health insurance
Why this role is different
At most companies this job is a slice: rendering someone else's design, or modeling parts that never leave the screen. Here you own the library the whole company builds from — the modules you design get fabricated downstairs, installed in vehicles, and put to work by real customers weeks later. You'll work directly with the CPO, touch every vertical we serve, and see your work show up everywhere: in proposals, in the configurator, in marketing, and on the road.