Product Design Engineer, FEA at Hark in San Jose, CA

About Hark

Hark is an artificial intelligence company building advanced, personalized intelligence. One that is proactive, multimodal, and capable of interacting with the world through speech, text, vision, and persistent memory.

We're pairing that intelligence with next-generation hardware to create a universal interface between humans and machines. While today's AI largely operates through chat boxes and decade-old devices, Hark is focused on what comes next: agentic systems that interact naturally with people and the real world.

To get there, we're developing multimodal models and next-generation AI hardware together - designed from the ground up as a single, unified interface for a new era of intelligent systems.

About the Role

We're looking for a Product Design Engineer with deep simulation and structural analysis expertise to help us build hardware that holds up to the demands of daily life. You'll be the analytical backbone of Hark's mechanical engineering team — using FEA and coupled simulation methods to validate design decisions, predict failure modes, and drive structural, thermal, and dynamic performance from the earliest stages of development through production release. This is a hands-on role where simulation directly shapes design: you'll work closely with product design engineers, industrial designers, and reliability teams to ensure that what we build is not just beautiful, but durable, precise, and manufacturable at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead structural, thermal, and dynamic finite element analysis (FEA) across Hark's hardware portfolio — enclosures, mechanical assemblies, flex systems, and interconnects — from concept through design validation
• Develop simulation models and methodologies that accurately predict real-world performance under drop, vibration, fatigue, thermal cycling, and mechanical load conditions
• Translate FEA findings into actionable design recommendations, collaborating directly with product design engineers to iterate geometry, material selection, and wall thickness before hardware builds
• Own tolerance stack-up analysis and dimensional management for critical assemblies, identifying risk early and driving resolution through design or process changes
• Define and maintain correlation studies between simulation results and physical test data; continuously improve model accuracy based on empirical feedback from reliability and quality teams
• Partner with Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering to evaluate design trade-offs weight, stiffness, thermal performance, and manufacturing constraints — and quantify those trade-offs analytically
• Support design of experiments (DoE) and design verification (DV) planning, defining simulation-based pass/fail criteria that map to physical test protocols

Requirements

• 8+ years of FEA and structural simulation experience in a consumer hardware, aerospace, medical device, or precision manufacturing environment
• Expert-level proficiency in at least one major FEA platform (ANSYS, Abaqus, Nastran, or equivalent); experience with meshing, boundary condition definition, nonlinear materials, and contact modeling
• Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals in solid mechanics, materials science, heat transfer, and dynamics — with the ability to sanity-check simulation outputs against first-principles reasoning
• Experience performing and interpreting drop, vibration, fatigue, and thermal analysis for physical products
• Proficiency in 3D CAD (SolidWorks, NX, Creo, or equivalent) and the ability to simplify and prepare geometry for simulation without losing critical structural fidelity
• Demonstrated track record of closing the loop between simulation predictions and physical test results — including model correlation and iterative refinement

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience with coupled thermal-structural or fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulation for compact, thermally constrained consumer electronics
• Familiarity with flexible PCB or overmold assembly mechanics and the simulation challenges they present
• Exposure to acoustic or vibration analysis in wearable or handheld devices
• Experience with topology optimization or generative design methods to guide optimized structural design
• Background in designing or validating components manufactured via injection molding, diecasting, or precision CNC machining

Compensation

The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $120,000 - $300,000 annually.

The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.