Product Development Engineer - Controls, Firmware & Electromechanical R&D

• Lead Product Development Engineer - your first stop when you need to know why something works the way it does, and a second set of eyes on your designs.
• Mechanical / Electrical Engineer - you’ll co-design boards, enclosures, sealing, and mounting together instead of inheriting a box your board has to fit into.
• The owner - directly, daily. He’s an engineer and product developer himself, not a spreadsheet layer between you and the work.
• Production, purchasing, and sales - all in the same building, so you hear from the field fast when something misbehaves on a real dock.

What you’ll own

• Firmware design and development for boat lift controls and marine products (motor control, remotes, sensing, connectivity)
• Hardware bring-up, bench testing, and debugging of new control products
• Product validation: test plans, environmental/field testing, and the fixes that follow
• Supporting our mobile app features and the firmware interfaces behind them
• Taking concepts to production alongside our mechanical design and production teams

• 4+ years of embedded/electromechanical product development building things people actually use - professional or seriously self-taught; we care what you’ve built, not where you learned it
• Solid embedded firmware skills (C/C++ on microcontrollers) and comfort debugging real hardware
• Hands-on instinct: you reach for the multimeter, scope, and soldering iron without being asked
• Self-direction and follow-through from prototype to production, not just proof-of-concept

Nice to have (tell us if you’ve got it)

• Motor control, power electronics, or RF/BLE/Wi-Fi connectivity experience
• Mobile app development or app/firmware integration
• PCB design, PLC/automation experience, or SolidWorks familiarity
• Marine, outdoor, or harsh-environment product experience

A note on credentials: an engineering degree is welcome but not required. If you’re self-taught and have real products to prove it, we’d rather see the products than the diploma.

• 3 weeks paid vacation + 1 week paid wellness days + 13 paid holidays
• Health insurance with company-funded HSA contribution (spouse & dependent coverage available)
• Profit sharing plan and annual reviews

Where we are

Avilla, Indiana - about 30 minutes north of Fort Wayne, 10 minutes from Kendallville, 20 from Auburn, and an easy drive from Columbia City, Ligonier, Angola, and the Warsaw/Winona Lake area. On-site, five days a week: this is hands-on product work with a machine shop, a prototype bench, and a production floor in the same building., * Health insurance

• Health savings account
• Paid time off

Application Question(s):

• Describe a product you personally took from concept through validation to production. What was your role, and what did you learn?

Lake Lite, Inc. · Avilla, Indiana (on-site - not a remote position) · Full-time · Small in-house engineering team

$95,000 - $120,000 / year, based on experience

You’d be the third engineer on a small in-house team. Lake Lite has two experienced engineers on staff - our lead product development engineer and our mechanical/electrical engineer. You’ll have peers to whiteboard with, a mechanical designer to co-design enclosures and mechanisms with, and design reviews that are real conversations.

We hire the person, then build the role. We’re not filling a slot on an org chart. If you’re strong in an area we hadn’t planned for - machine design, automation, product management, something we haven’t thought of - that becomes part of what you do here. Tell us what you’re best at and we’ll aim the work at it.

Build the whole product, not one slice of it. Lake Lite is a 25-person R&D-driven company in Avilla, Indiana, and our product line covers the waterfront: controls for every style of boat lift (cable, hydraulic, air-displacement, coastal, and powered lift screens), solar charging kits for boat lifts, advanced solar lighting for docks and homes, and a growing lineup of marine and waterfront equipment. Our products mix motor control, wireless remotes, sensors, solar power, app connectivity, and rugged mechanical design - and we develop all of it in-house.

No boring one-product job here. You’ll work on multiple products at once in a rapid-development environment - writing the firmware, wiring up the bench, debugging with a scope, and carrying products from working prototype through validation to production. If you’ve spent your career (or your garage years) building electromechanical things that survive the real world, you’ll feel at home here.