Lead Industrial Designer

Lead Industrial Designer

Beer & Beverage Industry | Austin, TX

Location: Austin, Texas (On-Site, Full-Time)

Reports to: Design Director

Taphandles designs and manufactures custom tap handles, dispense towers, and branded point-of-sale for breweries and beverage brands worldwide. Our products show up where brands compete hardest: at the bar.

We're hiring a Lead Industrial Designer for our Austin studio. Reporting to our Design Director, you'll work directly with our sales team to turn customer briefs into products that ship within months, and you'll carry the Design Director's creative and technical standards into the day-to-day work of the Austin studio. The role grows into supervising the Austin design team under the Design Director's leadership.

We move quickly, value originality, and design products built to get made.

What You'll Do

• Partner with Sales to translate customer briefs and brand assets into original, compelling product concepts
• Join customer conversations to present ideas, gather feedback, and shape creative direction
• Generate high-level hand sketches and rapid ideation drawings
• Explore multiple directions before refining toward strong solutions
• Create presentation-ready renderings and visual storytelling assets
• Build and refine 3D models
• Apply design-for-manufacturing principles from the earliest concept stages
• Set file-prep standards in Adobe Illustrator so artwork reaches our factory and global production partners accurate and complete
• Give day-to-day direction, feedback, and review to the Austin design and production spec team, in alignment with the Design Director
• Support prototyping, sampling, and production documentation
• Work with the Design Director on hiring, onboarding, and development of new Austin designers

Who You Are

• 4+ years of professional design experience in industrial design, packaging, point-of-sale, signage, promotional products, or brand design
• A portfolio demonstrating exceptional craft, taste, and visual thinking
• Strong sketching ability and conceptual skills; you generate ideas and refine them to completion
• Fluent in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
• Strong 3D modeling (Rhino preferred) and rendering (KeyShot) experience
• Experience guiding or informally leading other designers, with a collaborative, encouraging style
• Confident communicator who enjoys working directly with sales and customers
• Natural problem-solver who asks smart questions when information is incomplete
• Deep interest in physical products and how things are made
• Open to feedback and able to iterate quickly
• Permanent U.S. work authorization

We value raw ability, design taste, and problem-solving instincts, and we want a portfolio that shows your range.

Bonus Experience

• ZBrush or digital sculpting tools
• Exposure to branding, packaging, or beverage-related products

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $75,000 – $95,000 annually (based on experience and portfolio strength)
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Paid time off
• 401(k) with 4% company match

Equal Opportunity

Taphandles is an equal opportunity employer.

To Apply

For best consideration, email your resume and portfolio (PDF under 10MB) along with a brief introduction to recruit@taphandles.com.

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