Head of Design Business

About Gembah

Gembah empowers and enables product innovation. We are democratizing and demystifying the product creation process by helping entrepreneurs, e-commerce sellers and small-to-midsize businesses research, design, and manufacture products. 

At Gembah, we understand that retaining the resources required to successfully create and launch a new product is a significant challenge for most businesses. From research and design to sourcing and vetting overseas manufacturers, there are many hurdles on the path to bringing a new product to market.  

Gembah’s end-to-end solution was created with these challenges in mind. Our team of experts are an extension of our clients’ teams, guiding them step-by-step, regardless of where they are along the process. 

Gembah’s team is comprised of specialists, leading product designers, and engineers. In addition, Gembah works with an exclusive network of vetted factories in Asia. Today, Gembah has offices in the United States and China.

Job Description

Gembah is building a growing global network of industrial & product designers and mechanical & electrical engineers to help its marketplace customers invent, design, and manufacture new products at scale. The Head of Design business (HoD) will be responsible for assembling a world class product design and engineering team. This includes both growing and managing the internal design team, as well as being responsible for building out the company's global network of independent designers/engineers. The HoD will also act as the subject matter experts for product design, and work closely with our development team to evolve the platform to add increasing value to both customers and designers.

The design team works closely with the US sales and account management teams managing the design portion of customer projects. The primary goal for the team is to consistently deliver great product designs that meet customer needs and are ready for production. This includes the following responsibilities: i) proposals (evaluating product customer concepts/ideas and compiling proposals for product design), ii) staffing (matching product design needs to resources to find the best match for each project), iii) product design (coordinating the efforts of the assigned design team to complete the project), and iv) manufacturing support (collaborating with factories to ensure production to specifications). The DoD is also responsible for continuously refining the design and talent matching process and how to best leverage our network of designers and engineers globally, finding and qualifying new professionals, and nurturing the existing network to optimize quality, cost, and speed.  

Gembah helps customers make a wide variety of products, most of them consumer household items, from simply injection molded products, to more technical products requiring both mechanical and electrical engineering. Thus it is important for the HoD to have a variety of product design experience from many different product categories. The role will be part of the senior management team and report to the company COO.    

Key responsibilities include:

• Manage the current design team and proposal process to ensure projects are quoted accurately and in a timely manner
• Build out the Gembah network of designers to ensure sufficient talent and experience across product categories
• Establish and manage engagement metrics to ensure proper balance between supply and demand
• Oversee all design projects to ensure on time completion and client satisfaction 
• Organize and optimize the network of designers by building processes to continuously evaluate partners and improve quality
• Be an advocate for the designer community, balance supply with demand, to ensure designers are getting fair value from Gembah
• Evolve partnerships with manufacturers to stay on top of evolving capabilities  

The ideal candidate will have the following characteristics:

• Product design expert - Several years of working with new product design across multiple product categories
• Startup mentality - desire and ability to create great things from scratch 
• Value focused - invent new ways to add value to team and customers
• Process mindset - continuously find better ways to do the job  
• Servant leader - focused on making his/her team successful, and giving them the credit 
• Work ethic - can-do attitude and not afraid to get into the dirty details 

To Apply

Please submit our application form that can be found by clicking the button below.

You can also send your resume to [email protected].