What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Industrial Designer, Wellness position at kohler?
Location: Onsite 4 days onsite – Kohler, WI
Opportunity
Within the Industrial Design Team, you’ll work at the leading edge of innovation—exploring temperature variation, the soothing power of water, and multisensory experiences that calm, invigorate, and inspire. Your mission is clear: redefine wellness through design—bringing meaningful products, experiences, and interfaces to life that connect emotionally with consumers and push the category forward.
As a Senior Industrial Designer, you will play a critical leadership role within the New Product Development (NPD) community for Wellness. You’ll lead complex design initiatives from early concept through implementation, shaping not just what we make—but how we think about wellness as a brand.
You’ll balance creative vision with strategic thinking, collaborating across engineering, marketing, manufacturing, and beyond to deliver inspired, feasible, and market‑ready solutions.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and own large-scale and/or complex design projects from concept generation through implementation.
- Champion design excellence by guiding problem-solving exercises, ideation sessions, and critiques with Industrial Design partners and cross-functional teams.
- Translate ideas into reality through sketching, CAD, and high-fidelity mockups, ensuring exceptional attention to detail at every stage.
- Develop and present compelling product strategies and design narratives that deliver competitive and financial advantage.
- Build deep insight into socioeconomic trends, technology, interiors, and the wellness industry, applying learnings to product strategy and innovation.
- Define the target consumer for each product category and channel, ensuring design decisions resonate with the intended audience.
- Serve as a subject-matter expert in the Wellness category, executing design research, concept development, physical modeling, and storytelling.
- Partner closely with Engineering, Marketing, Purchasing, and Manufacturing to align design intent with business realities and operational excellence.
- Continuously explore and evolve model-making and presentation techniques to support speed, cost, and impact.
- Maintain awareness of consumer expectations, competitor offerings, and global design trends across U.S. and international markets.