# Colden Eldridge > Lead Product Design Engineer at Reality Labs Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/colden Product development has been an especially exciting challenge for me due to its multidisciplinary nature. It has always been my feeling that a well engineered product has an inherent beauty to it, and I enjoy working with industrial design and marketing teams to accentuate it. As a product design engineer at Apple, I have led the design and integration of antenna and speaker modules, taking them from concept through ramp. In the process, I worked closely with the hardware and industrial design teams to make sure that my designs met their requirements, balancing these against the needs of other module teams. In addition to product development, I am also interested in mechatronics, fluid dynamics, and green energy, fields which I pursued in my senior thesis with the Breuer fluid dynamics lab at Brown University. In the longer term, I hope to further develop my mechanical design skills while working on problems that allow me to expand my understanding of these fields, and the challenges associated with them. ## Work Experience ### Product Design Engineering Lead @ Meta Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area - Product design engineering lead on Reality Labs Wearables NTI team - Drive technology investigations in collaboration with RL Research and module teams to unlock new product capabilities - Leverage MP experience to bring these R&D technologies to market ### Product Design Engineer @ Meta Jan 2020 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area - Product design engineer on Reality Labs Wearables team developing first generation product categories - Own module and architecture trade offs for company, and industry-first new technology integration - Drive designs from concept through MP, in collaboration with XFN partners ### Product Design Engineer - iPad @ Apple Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area • Collaborate cross functionally to refine and execute product vision • Optimize designs for functional, aesthetic, and manufacturability concerns with vendors and internal experts • Communicate design intent and ensure product life requirements through stress and tolerance analysis, DFMEA, prototyping, testing, and failure analysis ### Mechanical Engineer @ Avegant Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area • Designed headset adjustment mechanisms to meet ID, thermal, and electrical requirements • Validated concepts through CAD, rapid prototypes, and user testing • Feedback of "the most comfortable head mounted display we've made" • Designed integrated optics bench housings for manufacturing, and created GD&T drawings ### Senior Mechanical Engineer - Advanced Development @ SharkNinja Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Greater Boston Area • Took on greater ownership of system-level product design, in addition to existing responsibilities ### Mechanical Engineer - Advanced Development @ SharkNinja Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Greater Boston Area • Developed R&D technologies into products in collaboration with Marketing and Industrial Design • Designed and operated subsystem test rigs to identify and solve for potential failure modes • Validated concepts through CAD, rapid prototypes, and user testing ### Mechanical Engineer - New Product Development @ SharkNinja Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 • Coordinated design efforts with international manufacturing partners from pre-production builds through mass production • Identified and characterized engineering, culinary, and marketing requirements • Determined root cause for testing failures, prototyped mitigations, and tracked to conclusion ### Mechanical Engineering Intern @ Kai Concepts - Kiteboat Project Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 • Assisted in mold fabrication and layup of carbon fiber components for hydrofoiling trimaran • Developed concepts for hydrofoil control, and kite-sail deployment mechanism • Performed and then experimentally confirmed FEA of carbon composite kiteboard hydrofoil ### Mechanical Engineering Intern @ Navatek Ltd Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 • Designed low cost flapping-foil gust generation device for wind tunnel • Wrote potential flow CFD code in MATLAB to determine ideal operating parameters • Designed system to achieve performance goals with minimal modification to tunnel ### Undergraduate Research Assistant @ Brown University Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Providence, Rhode Island • Wrote senior thesis on active flow control of lift/drag to improve wind turbine efficiency • Assisted in design and fabrication of induced-oscillation tidal energy harvesting device ### Mechanical Engineering Intern @ FormFactor Inc. Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 • Designed and built mechanical architecture to retain probe head to semiconductor probe cards • Simplified rework while accommodating mechanical and thermal operating requirements ### Mechanical Engineering Intern @ FormFactor Inc. Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 • Designed micro-scale manipulation hardware for new product development ## Education ### Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Mechanical Engineering Brown University Jan 2010 – Jan 2014 ### High School Diploma The Athenian School Jan 2003 – Jan 2010 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/colden-eldridge-18249798 - Portfolio: https://sites.google.com/a/brown.edu/colden-eldridge/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/colden JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/colden/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-30