Engineering Jobs In the Climbing Industry

Any advice or tips on finding and landing an engineering job (specifically mechanical engineering) in the climbing and/or outdoor industry?

I've surfed the usual sites of LinkedIn and outdoorindustryjobs.com with no luck, and very few climbing gear manufactures even have a section on there website for job openings much less a posting for engineering work.

I am an experienced engineer with a PE License but not really thrilled with staying in my industry for the next 20+ years of my career. My experience is not specifically in product design or manufacturing but I have worked with that segment. I worked with CAD/CAM/FEA software in college but pretty much haven't touched it since then.

Is 10+ years CAD and/or FEA, or manufacturing/testing experience a must have?
Where do you look for job openings?
Any body looking for the most highly motivated and willing to learn engineer, that also climbs, that you have ever met?

I've also been browsing outdoor gear career pages and vaguely remember seeing some engineer positions for Black Diamond, if you're near or willing to move to SLC. Other than that, outdoorindustryjobs.com or outdoorindustry.org have good job boards.

There is room in the industry for more companies.

13 years CAD (10 of it 3D) and 6 years FEM and aerospace experience here. For that kind of work, it tends to be few and far between, though they occasionally pop up. Your best bet is likely Black Diamond when there's an opening. You can contact Rock Exotica directly and they may interview you.

Petzl does all their engineering in France.

I had an interview with a company which for the sake of this discussion will remain unnamed. A lot of their validation is done via test. I would say they're after a designer who can analyze as opposed to an analyst who can design. I'm the latter and it in the end, it didn't work out at this point in the game. So I'd say apply anyway and see what happens.

It's likely that a lot of products are validated via test rather than analysis.

There are a lot of options in the textiles department. For us solid mechanics types, that's kind of voodoo.

J Bird wrote:There is room in the industry for more companies.

Seriously, climbing and outdoor gear seems pretty simple .... compared to say aerospace, semiconductors, etc. Just move to the front range and find an engineering job in your field like the rest of us.