About The firm
A small senior team that stays with the product until it ships.
NU was started by engineers who had spent their careers inside product companies and consultancies, and had watched too many good ideas die in the gap between a working prototype and a working production line. We built the firm to close that gap.
01 Why we exist
Most product development firms are good at the beginning.
Research, concepts, renderings, a beautiful appearance model. The work gets harder and less glamorous from there: tolerance stacks, EMC failures, a vendor who quietly changed a resin, a pilot build where nothing fits. That is where programs slip by a year, and it is where most firms hand the work back to you.
We are built for the second half. Our industrial designers have sat through tooling reviews. Our electrical engineers have spent weeks in certification labs. Our firmware engineers have written the end-of-line test that runs on the factory floor. When we start a program we are already thinking about how it ends.
02 Who you will work with
No account managers. The people in the kickoff are the people doing the work.
Every program has a lead engineer who owns the schedule, the risk register and the relationship. Around them is a core team drawn from the disciplines below, sized to the phase, with the same faces from start to finish.
- Program leadSenior engineer, any disciplineOwns the plan, the risks and the weekly review. Your single point of contact. Has shipped products before, at least a few.
- Industrial designDesigners who draw for mouldsForm, CMF, appearance models, surface data for tooling. Sit with mechanical from day one.
- MechanicalEnclosures, mechanisms, thermalDesign for the process. Tolerance analysis before the first prototype, not after the first failure.
- ElectricalArchitecture, layout, bring-upPower, sensing, wireless, motor drive. Pre-compliance on our bench so the lab is a formality.
- Embedded softwareBare metal to LinuxDrivers, control, connectivity, secure updates. Automated tests on real hardware from the first board.
- Human factorsResearch and validationField research at the start, formative studies through development, summative validation at the end.
- ManufacturingVendors, tooling, pilot buildsJoin in phase two, not phase four. Run the transfer and stay through first production.
03 How we behave
What it is like to work with us, according to the people who have.
We would rather lose a phase than win a program we do not believe in.
We say no more often than clients expect. Not to the work, but to the schedule that cannot hold, the feature that will sink the cost target, the vendor who is cheapest for a reason. Clients tell us afterwards that this was the most valuable thing we did. It rarely feels that way in the meeting.
We show work early and ugly. A breadboard on a plank, a foam block with tape on it, a spreadsheet with the wrong answer in it. Polished reviews come later, once there is something worth polishing. If you want a firm that only shows finished things, we are the wrong fit.
And we write things down. Decisions, reasons, test results, the name of the person at the moulder who actually picks up the phone. Two years from now, when someone asks why the wall thickness is 1.8 and not 2.0, the answer will be in the file.
04 The shop
Enough under one roof to get an answer today.
We keep the equipment that shortens the loop between a question and a result: printers, a small CNC, a reflow oven, an environmental chamber, a drop rig and a well-stocked electronics bench. For everything else we have partners we have worked with for years, close enough to visit.
05 Working here
We hire slowly and mostly by referral.
If you have shipped hardware, have opinions about drawings, and would rather be in the shop than in a status meeting, we would like to hear from you even when nothing is posted. Send a note and something you built to hello@nuproductdevelopment.com.
06 Start a conversation
If any of this sounds like the firm you have been looking for, say hello.
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