sharkninja co-op experience

July 2024 - December 2024

During my time as a Mechanical Engineering Co-op at SharkNinja, I was part Shark Robotic’s New Product Development team. I had the opportunity to work on product development, mechanical testing, and design iteration in a fast-paced consumer product environment. My role focused on improving the performance of products, troubleshooting mechanical issues, and contributing to the engineering process from early design stages to testing and validation.

One of the key challenges I worked on was reducing hair entanglement in robotic vacuum side brushes—a common issue affecting performance and requiring frequent user maintenance. This experience has strengthened my ability to analyze mechatronic systems, optimize designs within real-world constraints, and collaborate with cross-functional teams. Below is a look at some of the work I contributed to and the challenges I tackled along the way. Due to NDAs, I can’t include pictures or too detailed descriptions of my work. However, I would love to discuss them on a different platform.

the challenge: optimizing performance and durability

The core of my work was the challenge of improving product reliability while maintaining efficiency. For robotic vacuums, hair entanglement in side brushes is a well-known issue that can impact cleaning performance over time. The goal was to develop a brush design that minimized hair wrap while maintaining strong debris pickup and longevity. Beyond this, every proposed solution had to be tested and validated to ensure the changes provided a measurable improvement. This meant intensive mechanical testing, failure analysis, and iterative refinements to verify that new designs worked under real-world situations.

the process: engineering a better solution

The first step was analyzing how hair interacted with the brush mechanism in different environments. Through structured testing, I gathered insights on how hair wraps around the bristles under different cleaning conditions, which materials and geometries caused more or less entanglement, and failure points where the brushes would get clogged leading to performance loss. From these insights, I worked with the team to explore design modifications aimed at reducing entanglement. My contributions included:

  • CAD Modeling & Prototyping: Developed variations of the side brush with adjustments to the bristle shape, stiffness, and density through 3D printing.

  • Material Research: Evaluated alternative bristle materials that offered better flexibility and resistance to tangling.

  • Hair Removal Strategies: Explored potential design features that could allow for easier user cleaning while maintaining brush efficiency.

Once the prototypes were made, I helped structure and execute controlled mechanical tests to measure real-world performance. This involved:

  • Running repeated cleaning cycles on different surfaces to analyze hair wrap accumulation over time.

  • Conducting durability testing to ensure design changes didn’t compromise brush longevity or cleaning effectiveness.

  • Adjusting test parameters to better simulate real user conditions, improving the reliability of our data.

Testing results revealed which design variation performed the best, leading to further refinements in an iterative cycle of modifications, testing, and validation.

key skills & takeaways

✅ Mechanical Testing & Failure Analysis — Understanding how products behave under stress and improving test methods

✅ CAD & Design Iteration — Making data-driven design modifications while maintaining cost and manufacturability constraints utilizing Solidworks and Creo Parametric

✅ Problem Solving in a Fast-Paced Industry — Learning how to troubleshoot mechanical challenges effectively

✅ Cross-Functional Collaboration — Working with design testing, and manufacturing teams to ensure product performance.

Working at SharkNinja gave me a first-hand experience in engineering problem solving, iterative design, and real-world testing applications. I gained a deeper understanding and appreciation for how engineering teams refine products through data-driven decision making, balancing performance with cost and manufacturing constraints.

These lessons will continue to shape my approach to mechanical design and product development, whether in consumer products or in my future work in the automotive industry.