Job description
Job Type: Full-Time, Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM
Salary: $110,000-$145,000/annually
Reports To: Director of Product Development
Design machines that customers use every day
STL is a family-owned manufacturing company in Gresham, Oregon, with approximately 100 employees. Founded in 1992 as a self-adhesive label manufacturer, STL has expanded into label printing, data-security products, specialty materials, and custom product development.
Our customers often bring us difficult problems that standard products do not solve. That problem-solving culture led us to create PrinTrayce, our internal automation group focused on compact machines that print and apply labels in demanding manufacturing environments.
PrinTrayce equipment is currently used in the fruit and produce industry in Yakima, Washington, and we are seeing growing demand from packaging, distribution, manufacturing, OEMs, and automation integrators.
Our engineering team is entering a growth phase. We have active customer opportunities, an expanding product line, and a need to improve our equipment quickly and intelligently.
We are looking for someone who wants to understand the product, the customer, the manufacturing process, and the business opportunity. The right person will study our machines, ask good questions, develop practical ideas, and help us build equipment that is simpler, more reliable, easier to assemble, and easier to support and sell.
This role is not limited to completing assigned drawings. One week you may design a new mechanism in CAD; the next, you may assemble and test a prototype, revise the design, and see it installed at a customer site.
What You’ll Do
Our engineers are expected to own engineering problems—not just CAD models. When customers bring us an automation challenge, you will help define the problem, develop practical concepts, test potential solutions, and carry the selected approach through validation and production release.
During your first six months, you will be expected to learn our current product lineup, contribute to active machine and mechanism improvements, support prototype builds and testing, create production-ready CAD, drawings, and BOMs, and begin independently owning subsystems involving motion, sensing, or product handling.
A successful week might include:
- Sketching and evaluating a new mechanism
- Reading a servo, motor-driver, VFD, or sensor manual
- Working with software engineers to coordinate motion and machine behavior
- Assembling and testing a prototype
- Reviewing manufacturability and assembly improvements with technicians
- Visiting a customer installation to understand a real-world problem
- Redesigning a subsystem based on test results
Your responsibilities will include:
- Design complete mechanical mechanisms and machine subsystems for automation equipment
- Select and integrate motors, gear reductions, bearings, belts, gears, actuators, sensors, pneumatics, and related components
- Perform practical engineering calculations involving speed, torque, inertia, loading, mechanical advantage, accuracy, backlash, weight distribution, structural behavior, and tolerance stack-up
- Create production-ready CAD models, drawings, BOMs, and technical documentation
- Design for manufacturability and assembly using sheet metal, machined components, plastics, and 3D-printed parts
- Research unfamiliar technologies, components, and manufacturing methods using vendor documentation, engineering references, experimentation, and AI-assisted research tools
- Build, test, measure, troubleshoot, and improve prototypes
- Collaborate with software, electrical, assembly, manufacturing, vendors, and customers
- Diagnose machine problems that may involve mechanics, motion, sensors, software timing, material behavior, or operator interaction
- Support products from prototype through production, commissioning, installation, and field use
What We’re Looking For
We are looking for someone who has demonstrated strong performance in a professional engineering environment. Initiative, judgment, and proven ability matter more to us than a specific number of years in the field.
In your application, describe one automated machine or motion-based mechanism for which you personally made significant design decisions. Explain what moved, how it was driven and controlled, what calculations or component selections you performed, what failed during testing, and how you corrected it.
Required capabilities
- Typically five or more years of relevant mechanical or machine-design experience; exceptional candidates with less experience will be considered based on demonstrated ability
- Strong 3D CAD skills and the ability to create clean, adaptable models and assemblies that support rapid iteration
- Professional experience designing mechanisms or automated machinery, rather than only static parts, enclosures, tooling, molds, or fixtures
- Experience selecting and integrating motors, gear reductions, bearings, belts, gears, actuators, sensors, pneumatics, or similar machine components
- Ability to perform practical calculations involving torque, speed, inertia, loads, mechanical advantage, structural behavior, tolerance stack-up, backlash, and accuracy
- Ability to turn an incomplete customer problem into concepts, prototypes, tests, design revisions, and production-ready documentation
- Comfort collaborating with software, electrical, manufacturing, assembly, vendors, and customers
- Ability to read technical manuals, research unfamiliar subjects, consult vendors and engineering references, and quickly develop enough knowledge to make responsible decisions
- Willingness to build, test, troubleshoot, measure, and improve the machinery being designed
Helpful additional experience
- Industrial automation
- Packaging or labeling equipment
- Servo or stepper motion
- VFD-driven equipment
- Sensors and machine sequencing
- Conveyors, feeders, pneumatics, robotics, or vision systems
- 3D-printed production components
- Customer installations and machine commissioning
- Design for assembly and field service
Who Succeeds Here
This position is well suited to someone who enjoys creating products that solve real-world problems.
You will probably enjoy this role if you:
- Are self-directed and can make progress without having every task fully defined
- Naturally look for better ways to build things
- Are willing to study unfamiliar technologies when they may improve the product
- Care whether the product works reliably in the field, not merely whether the CAD model is complete
- Take ownership of your decisions and work
- Enjoy seeing ideas become real products
- Prefer a fast-moving, small-team environment over a large corporate engineering department
- Want your work to have a visible effect on the company’s success
What We Offer
- Salary of $110,000 to $145,000, depending on experience and demonstrated ability
- Health benefits
- Paid vacation and holidays
- Opportunities for professional growth
- Direct involvement in product strategy and innovation
- A small team where your ideas are heard
- The opportunity to help shape the next generation of industrial automation equipment
If you are looking for a role centered on updating existing drawings, this probably is not the right fit.
If you want to design machines that customers depend on—and see your work progress from concept through production—we would like to hear from you.
Job Type: Full-time
Pay: $100,000.00 - $130,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Employee assistance program
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Health savings account
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
- Referral program
- Retirement plan
- Vision insurance
Ability to Commute:
- Gresham, OR 97030 (Required)
Ability to Relocate:
- Gresham, OR 97030: Relocate before starting work (Required)
Work Location: In person
