Design Engineer Poppy & Peep Nashville, TN Job Details Part-time $28 - $36 an hour 16 hours ago Benefits Flexible schedule Qualifications Teamwork Research Revit Millwork Industrial engineering Mechanical knowledge Full Job Description We have a lot of ideas. We need someone who can figure out how to actually make them! We're looking for a rare combination of engineer, designer, problem-solver and maker to join a small, highly creative team working across two very different Nashville-based businesses: a multidisciplinary design studio and a specialty food/manufacturing company. This isn't a traditional engineering job. It isn't quite a traditional design job, either. We're looking for someone with an engineering education, an excellent visual eye and a natural instinct for figuring things out.

Someone who can take:

inspiration → idea → model → rendering → technical drawing → prototype → real life. Our projects don't stay neatly inside one discipline or scale. One week you might draw and render a custom banquette. The next, model a component for confectionary production. Then you might lay out a production kitchen, develop fabrication drawings for custom millwork, troubleshoot a manufacturing problem, or help determine how a large-scale public installation could actually be fabricated and installed. If your brain naturally switches between "That would be beautiful" and "Okay, but how are we actually going to make that?" , we want to meet you.

WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON

Interiors

+ Environments You'll help translate creative concepts into drawings and visuals that clients, developers, contractors, millworkers, fabricators and our internal team can actually use. Projects may include architectural plans, elevations, sections and details; space planning; field measurements and as-builts; custom millwork; furniture drawings; finish specifications; equipment layouts; construction-document coordination; and presentation-ready renderings. Sometimes you'll receive an organized brief. Sometimes you'll receive six inspiration photos, a sketch and a verbal explanation of something that doesn't exist yet. You should enjoy turning both into something clear. Visualization We want to see things before we make them. You'll create: Photorealistic interior renderings Product and furniture renderings Concept visualizations Material and finish studies Presentation boards 3D models Renderings of your own concepts before fabrication Polished visuals developed from sketches, inspiration photographs and verbal creative direction You should be able to make something beautiful enough to communicate the vision and accurate enough to start figuring out how to build it. Products

+ Objects We design beyond rooms. You'll help develop furniture, displays, packaging, components, fixtures, trays, equipment solutions and other physical objects. That means thinking about appearance and manufacturability: tolerances, clearances, hardware, connections, assembly, materials, fabrication methods, cost and what happens when a beautiful rendering meets the real world. Food

+ Manufacturing One of the businesses is a growing specialty-food manufacturer, which gives this role an entirely different technical playground.

Projects may include:

Rendering and technically planning a new production kitchen Developing kitchen and equipment layouts Helping evaluate new production equipment Improving workflow and production processes Helping test, calculate, document and standardize confectionery formulations alongside the production team—including ingredient ratios, water calculations , batch scaling and yields Helping design and document roasting experiments and profiles Developing packaging, trays, displays and production components Prototyping solutions to production problems Helping plan spaces for tours, classes and customer experiences Building better technical documentation and repeatable systems Helping prepare a growing manufacturing operation for larger-scale retail production You'll work alongside the appropriate food-science, engineering and other specialized professionals when a project requires expertise beyond your scope. Knowing when we don't know enough yet is an important part of this job. Fabrication + Engineering We want someone who thinks about how things actually go together. You'll work with: 2D drafting 3D modeling Millwork drawings Furniture drawings Shop drawings Fabrication drawings Exploded diagrams Dimensioned product drawings Bills of materials Packaging development Powder-coating Product and component design Basic mechanical design Prototyping CNC-ready design thinking Value engineering Vendor and fabricator coordination Troubleshooting fabrication problems You should have working knowledge of materials such as wood, metal, acrylic, plastics, stone and composites , along with basic structural reasoning, hardware and fastening methods. You don't need to personally engineer or stamp everything. You do need enough technical judgment to recognize when a project needs a licensed structural, civil, MEP or other specialist and be able to collaborate effectively with them.

THEN THERE ARE THE BIG IDEAS

We're building toward work at a much larger scale: public art → sculpture → airports → murals → streetscapes → playgrounds → amphitheaters → experiential environments. That could mean developing concepts and renderings, documenting sites, researching materials, thinking through fabrication and transportation, developing installation sequences, creating technical drawings, coordinating with engineers and fabricators, or helping assemble the technical pieces of a bid, RFQ or RFP. You won't be expected to know how to do all of that on Day One. You will be expected to be excited about learning how.

THE UNUSUAL PART

You need to be comfortable changing scales constantly: interior → millwork → furniture → product → packaging → equipment → sculpture → installation. Monday might be a custom banquette. Tuesday might be a candy-production component. Wednesday could be a production kitchen. Thursday could be figuring out why something can't be fabricated the way we originally imagined. Friday might be modeling something we've never made before. For the right person, that's the best part of the job.

SOFTWARE

Core You should be proficient in—or have a strong working foundation that allows you to quickly become proficient in: AutoCAD SketchUp Bluebeam Revu Rhino, Fusion 360, SolidWorks or comparable 3D CAD software Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop Strong Bonuses Revit Enscape, V-Ray, Lumion, Twinmotion or another rendering engine CNC/CAM software Adobe InDesign We don't expect one person to be an expert in every program listed. We care much more about whether you're technically capable, resourceful and extremely fast at learning. We also actively use AI tools—including Claude and similar platforms—for research, analysis, documentation, comparison, ideation and efficiency. We want someone who is excited about using new technology without confusing AI output with verified technical information.

WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR

An engineering educational background is required. We're particularly interested in mechanical, industrial, manufacturing, architectural, civil, structural or closely related engineering backgrounds. A PE license is not required . Experience or portfolio work involving any of the following will immediately get our attention: Industrial design Design engineering Architectural fabrication Custom millwork Furniture design Product development Experiential design Technical design Fabrication engineering We're especially interested in someone who has made things . Professional work counts. So do prototypes, furniture, CNC projects, personal experiments, products, models, fabrication projects and weird things you built simply because you wanted to see whether you could.

YOUR BRAIN MATTERS AS MUCH AS YOUR R

ÉSUMÉ We want someone who is: Analytical. You naturally want evidence before making assumptions. Critical. You notice the thing everyone else overlooked and aren't afraid to bring it up. Restorative. Problems make you want to solve them. Curious. You genuinely enjoy learning things you don't already understand. Resourceful. "I've never done that before" is the beginning of your research, not the end of the conversation. Deliberate. You think about what could go wrong before we spend money or build something. Strategic. You can see multiple paths to an outcome. Responsible. If you say you're going to figure something out, you follow it through. Independent. You don't require a traditional office or constant supervision to make meaningful progress. And importantly, you're comfortable disagreeing. We're not looking for a yes-person. We're also not looking for someone whose technical expertise becomes a reason everything interesting is impossible.

Our favorite answer is:

"That version won't work. Here's why—and here are two versions that could."

HOW WE WORK

This is a Nashville-based, hybrid and remote-friendly role. We don't work from one traditional office every day. Depending on the project, you may be working remotely from your laptop, at a production facility, at an interior project site, from a coworking environment or alongside members of the team. A substantial portion of the job is independent computer-based work. You should be extremely comfortable being laptop-friendly : taking a project with you, working independently, documenting your progress and communicating clearly about what you've completed, what's unresolved and what you need from us. You'll also need to be based in or near Nashville and available for field measurements, site visits, fabrication meetings, installations, production troubleshooting and in-person collaboration when the project calls for it. If you need the same desk in the same office every day, this probably isn't the job for you.

CLIFTONSTRENGTHS / STRENGTHSFINDER

We're interested in how you naturally think and solve problems , not just what's on your résumé. Candidates who move forward in the interview process may be asked to complete the CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) assessment and share their results as one additional conversation tool during the hiring process. There is no required Top 5 and no "correct" result. However, this position tends to reward behaviors associated with themes such as: Analytical Restorative Learner Deliberative Strategic Responsibility Focus Achiever Discipline Activator We're interested in understanding how you work , where you're naturally strongest, and what kind of environment allows you to do your best work. The assessment is one data point—not a pass/fail test.

POSITION DETAILS

Title:

Design Engineer /

Technical Designer Location:

Nashville, Tennessee Work Style:

Hybrid + remote-friendly

Schedule:

Approximately 15-20 combined hours/week to start, with opportunity to grow

Employment:

Two part-time W-2 positions across two related businesses

Start:

Fall 2026

Review:

90-day review The role is intentionally flexible. Some weeks may lean more heavily toward design work; others toward manufacturing, product development or technical problem-solving.

TO APPLY

Please send: 1. Your résumé 2. A portfolio or relevant work samples. This is important. We're just as interested in seeing what you've made as where you've worked. 3. A short introduction answering this question: Tell us about something you designed, built, engineered or figured out that you're particularly proud of. What was the problem, and how did you approach it? Your portfolio does not need to look like a traditional architecture portfolio. Show us drawings. Renderings. Models. Products. Furniture. Prototypes. Fabrication. Personal projects. Experiments. Things that failed and got better. We care a lot about how you think.

Pay:

$28.00 - $36.00 per hour Expected hours: 15.0 - 25.0 per week

Benefits:

Flexible schedule

Work Location:

Hybrid remote in Nashville, TN 37210