Industrial Designer - Outdoor Products
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Summary
Backyard Products is hiring an early-career Industrial Designer (0-3 years) in Plano, TX to develop outdoor living products like sheds, gazebos, greenhouses, and storage from concept to retail. Day to day involves sketching, 3D CAD in SolidWorks, renderings in KeyShot, AI-assisted visuals, and cross-functional work with engineering, marketing, and manufacturing.
Backyard Products is looking for a creative and highly motivated Industrial Designer to join our product development team in Plano, Texas.
This is an excellent opportunity for an early-career designer who wants to see ideas move beyond the sketchbook and become real products in consumers' backyards.
The Industrial Designer will help develop products across our outdoor structures, storage, and outdoor living portfolio, including gazebos, arbors, greenhouses, planter boxes, outdoor kitchens, sheds, outdoor storage solutions, and related accessories.
The ideal candidate combines creative thinking, strong visualization skills, and practical problem solving with an interest in how products are engineered, manufactured, assembled,
packaged, merchandised, and ultimately used by consumers.
You will help translate consumer needs, market opportunities, backyard trends, and emerging lifestyles into compelling early-stage ideas and then work with cross-functional teams to develop those ideas into commercially viable products.
Key Responsibilities
Product Design & Concept Development:
- Design and develop new products across the Backyard Products portfolio, including sheds, gazebos, arbors, greenhouses, planter boxes, outdoor kitchens, outdoor storage products, and related accessories.
- Rapidly translate early concepts and sketches into 3D CAD, renderings, and tangible product solutions, using SolidWorks and KeyShot to evaluate form, function, proportion, materials, features, and overall consumer appeal.
- Explore multiple design directions early in the development process, helping the team quickly move from abstract ideas to realistic and actionable product concepts.
- Develop concepts from initial ideation through refinement and support their progression toward production-ready, commercially viable products.
Consumer & Market-Driven Design:
- Use competitive research, market trends, consumer needs, retail insights, and existing portfolio knowledge to identify new product opportunities and inform design direction.
- Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, and Product Management to understand retailer needs, consumer expectations, competitive positioning, and emerging backyard trends.
- Look beyond existing products to identify opportunities for new features, configurations, materials, aesthetics, accessories, and consumer experiences.
Design for Commercialization:
- Create product concepts that balance design appeal, functionality, manufacturability, cost, assembly, durability, packaging, shipping, and retail requirements.
- Participate in cross-functional concept and design reviews, clearly presenting design concepts and rationale while incorporating feedback into subsequent development stages.
- Support design handoffs and product development activities alongside Engineering, Product Management, sourcing, and manufacturing teams.
- Work collaboratively to maintain the original consumer and design intent as concepts move through engineering and commercialization.
Visualization & Communication:
- Develop high-quality product renderings, lifestyle imagery, animations, presentation materials, and other visual assets that clearly communicate product concepts and design intent.
- Create compelling visual presentations using cutting edge AI tools that allow internal teams, retailers, and external partners to quickly understand a product's design, features, scale, use case, and consumer value.
- Collaborate with Product Management and Marketing to translate product features and design decisions into clear consumer-facing benefits, product stories, and positioning.
Time Management & Collaboration:
- Manage multiple design projects simultaneously, balancing concept exploration, refinement, visualization timelines
- Work closely with Industrial Design, Engineering, Product/Project Management, Marketing, Sales, sourcing, and manufacturing teams throughout the development process.
- Be receptive to feedback and comfortable iterating quickly as consumer, retailer, manufacturing, and business requirements evolve.
Qualifications:
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Industrial Design or a closely related design discipline.
- 0–3 years of professional experience in industrial design, product design, or product development. Strong recent graduates with relevant internship, co-op, or portfolio experience are encouraged to apply.
- Working knowledge of SolidWorks for 3D CAD development.
- Working knowledge of KeyShot for product visualization and rendering.
- Proficiency with the Adobe Creative Suite, particularly Photoshop and Illustrator.
- Proficiency with Microsoft PowerPoint and the ability to create clear, visually compelling design presentations.
- Strong sketching, visualization, form-development, and concept-communication skills.
- Ability to rapidly move between 2D ideation, 3D CAD, rendering, presentation, and physical product thinking.
- Strong attention to detail with an understanding of proportion, materials, color, finish, and consumer-facing design.
- Ability to communicate ideas clearly and work effectively within a collaborative, cross-functional environment.
Preferred Experience & Interests:
While previous experience with outdoor products is not required, we are particularly interested in candidates who have an enthusiasm for designing larger-scale consumer products and outdoor environments.
Experience, coursework, internships, or portfolio projects involving any of the following would be beneficial:
- Outdoor living products
- Gazebos, pergolas, or outdoor structures
- Sheds and storage systems
- Greenhouses and gardening products
- Outdoor kitchens
- Furniture
- Architectural or spatial products
- Wood, metal, or mixed-material construction
- Products requiring consumer assembly
- Retail consumer products
What We're Looking For:
We're looking for a designer who is curious, creative, hands-on, and excited about making ideas real.
The right candidate enjoys asking:
What does the consumer actually need?
What could make this product meaningfully better?
How can we make this idea visually compelling?
Can we manufacture it efficiently?
Can a consumer assemble and use it easily?
How does it stand apart from what's already in the market?
What could make this product meaningfully better?
How can we make this idea visually compelling?
Can we manufacture it efficiently?
Can a consumer assemble and use it easily?
How does it stand apart from what's already in the market?
You don't need to know everything on day one. We're looking for someone with a strong design foundation, an eagerness to learn, and the ability to rapidly develop their skills while working on real products that move from consumer insight → concept → CAD → visualization → engineering → manufacturing → retail.
Why Backyard Products?
This role provides an opportunity to work on products at a scale rarely available to entry-level industrial designers.
Rather than focusing on a single product category, you'll have the opportunity to help shape a broad range of products that define how consumers store, organize, garden, cook, entertain, and spend time in their backyards.
You'll work directly with experienced product development teams and gain exposure to the complete product development process—from identifying the initial market opportunity through seeing the finished product reach consumers.
**PLEASE UPLOAD A PORTFOLIO WHEN APPLYING!