Principal Product Developer (Backyard Living, Style & Home)

Responsibilities

• You thrive at the intersection of creativity and execution, balancing style, performance, quality, and value to create products that resonate with customers and support strong business results.
• Support the development of trend-driven, design-forward assortments across multiple categories within Backyard Living.
• Translate category strategy and customer insights into cohesive product collections with strong storytelling.
• Communicate product concepts through sketches, photorealistic renderings, and technical specification packages, ensuring products deliver on-brand.
• Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, including Category Business Manager (Buyer), Brand, Quality, and our Pacific Rim Office, to ensure timely and successful product launches.
• Communicate with manufacturing partners and ensure they deliver on the design intent and quality expectations set forth in your technical specifications.
• Contribute across the full product lifecycle-from concept creation and technical package development to sample review and final execution.
• Help elevate product quality, aesthetics, and innovation while maintaining a strong focus on cost and speed-to-market.
• Conduct market research to identify new opportunities and improvements for existing products suitable for our target customers across multiple banners.
• Proactively ensure that the entire product lifecycle from planning to execution and post-launch analysis runs smoothly.
• Ensure your projects are engineered to meet or exceed cost targets and financial objectives.
• Gather post-launch feedback for continuous improvement.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations with the support of Quality counterparts.
• What You Bring:
• Undergraduate degree in Industrial Design or a related field.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in a product development role.
• Strong expertise in Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop), with additional experience in 3D modeling (SolidWorks).
• Proven ability to balance creativity with commercial thinking and executional excellence.
• A passion for furniture design, décor, and outdoor living design, with a strong point of view on trends, colour, materials, and finishes.
• Strong collaboration and influencing skills across cross-functional teams.
• Expertise in product development processes, materials, and construction.
• A customer-first mindset, with the ability to translate insights into impactful product solutions
• Familiarity with common manufacturing techniques, including injection and compression molding, high-frequency welding, cut-and-sew, screen printing, embroidery, etc.
• Willingness and capability for hands-on work, such as assembling, disassembling, moving, and lifting furniture and gazebos for the purpose of product review, benchmarking, and sample management.
• Proactive and passionate approach to driving fresh, innovative thinking from product concept to final execution.
• The ability to keep ego in check, while collaborating with our dynamic cross-functional teams to achieve business goals.
• Strong presentation and speaking skills-able to present and sell to all levels of the organization, as well as to the customer, while communicating a clear and inspiring vision.
• The ability to precisely communicate and negotiate time frames verbally and in writing.
• Demonstrated collaboration, interpersonal influence, and teamwork skills (maintains effective communication and working relationships).
• Results-oriented while exhibiting great energy and resourcefulness.
• Self-starter who brings passion, enthusiasm and focus to each project.
• Exceptional project planning, organizational, and time management skills, with a high level of initiative and attention to detail.
• Strong analytical skills and data-driven thinking.
• Team player - you like working with people and people like working with you; you do what needs to be done to strive for a common goal.
• Able to manage deadlines, be flexible with change, and drive timely resolution.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally to trade shows for market research and to vari

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