Industrial Design Project Manager (Fractional / Part-Time)

Start: July 1, 2026

Part-time, fractional role (ongoing) — approximately 15–25 hours per week. Local candidates prioritized.

About Hatch Duo

Hatch Duo is an award-winning industrial design and engineering consultancy in San Jose. We design and engineer hardware for companies shaping their categories across consumer electronics, robotics, medtech, wearables, beauty tech, sports tech, and gaming. We are a tight-knit, fast, and senior-by-design studio that ships real products and makes outsized impact for the brands we work with. Founded and led by Jonathan Thai, we partner with ambitious founders and Fortune 500 teams alike to catalyze new product categories and bring them to market.

Who We Are Looking For

This is a fractional role to manage our growing project pipeline. We are bringing on an Industrial Design Project Manager on a part-time, fractional basis to ensure every project maintains its rigor and pace, even when the studio is at full tilt. This role is ideal for someone with experience in design/engineering management who is ready to step fully into project and program management as their craft.

• Organized by instinct — you see dependencies and risks before they become problems
• Can run timelines and budgets without becoming the person nobody wants to update
• Translates fluently between industrial designers, mechanical and electrical engineers, and clients
• Protects scope and creative quality simultaneously
• Has a bias for action — you make priority calls when timelines compress
• Brings calm and structure to a fast, high-pressure studio and is energized by it
• Has low ego, high standards, and real ambition to build a program management career
• Wants your fingerprints on shipped products across wildly different categories

You will work directly with Hatch Duo's partners on how projects run and how the studio operates.

Responsibilities

• Build and own project roadmaps, schedules, and milestones — mapping dependencies across design and engineering so nothing slips silently
• Manage timelines, budgets, and scope across multiple concurrent client engagements
• Forecast resourcing and studio capacity — know what each project needs before it needs it, and keep time-tracking systems current
• Drive cross-functional execution between industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering/firmware, and the founding team
• Identify risks, blockers, and dependencies early — and clear them
• Facilitate tradeoff decisions between design intent, engineering constraints, and client requirements
• Scope and document deliverables, manage client expectations, and secure clear client sign-off before work begins
• Run design reviews, build schedules, and client check-ins, and turn them into clear, tracked next steps
• Communicate status, priorities, and risk to the team, the founder, and clients — clearly and without spin
• Track prototyping and engineering milestones from concept through DFMA, EVT, DVT, and PVT
• Grow your program management craft with direct, hands-on mentorship from the founder
• Work on-site with the team in our San Jose studio

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in industrial design or equivalent
• Direct experience in industrial design and/or hardware product development (consultancy experience preferred)
• Ability to guide designers, extended team members, and stakeholders through the end-to-end industrial design process
• Exceptional verbal, visual, and written communication skills for a wide range of audiences
• Ability to facilitate solutions to complex problems with engineering, design, and supplier teams
• Ability to lead a team on a large number of projects while ensuring design and business goals are met
• 3–6 years of lead project or program management experience — formal, or hands-on within an industrial design or hardware team — and a clear ambition to make program management your career
• A track record of owning timelines, budgets, or client scope on real, shipped projects
• Working knowledge of engineering and prototyping processes, including DFMA, EVT, DVT, and PVT
• Strong organizational skills and the people skills to move cross-functional teams without direct authority
• Clear written communication — you can turn a messy project into a scope document, a schedule, and a status update people actually read
• Comfort building and maintaining schedules, and the drive to get fluent fast with project management tools (Asana, Jira, Smartsheet, Linear, or similar)
• Branding or brand-development experience
• A bias for action and steadiness under pressure — comfortable making priority calls when timelines compress
• Must live within commuting distance of our San Jose studio and work on-site (no remote or hybrid)

Demonstrate qualifications with a portfolio of leadership and hands-on design across a wide range of high-volume consumer products.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience working as an industrial designer
• A strong eye for design and the ability to speak credibly about craft
• Any formal project management exposure or training (Agile/Scrum, PMP/CAPM, or similar) — or the drive to pursue it
• Experience coordinating with engineering teams and external vendors or contract manufacturers
• Familiarity with AI tools in a design or production workflow
• Fluency with Slack and modern collaboration tools
• Design consultancy or agency experience

Benefits

• A genuine career step-up — running live client programs with founder mentorship
• Work directly with the founder — no layers, no handoffs
• Real ownership from day one — you run your projects
• Category variety — touch robotics, wearables, medtech, gaming, and more in a single month
• Ship real products — your work goes to market, not decks that die in review
• Visible impact — on a small, senior team, your work is seen and shapes how the firm runs
• A studio with momentum — joining a busy and growing team
• A real path forward — the fractional engagement can grow into a full-time role as the studio scales

If you want impact, ownership, and a real step up in your career — and you thrive in a fast-paced environment — you will thrive here.