Computational Designer (Apparel)

Location: London, UK 

Salary: In the region of £35,000, dependent on experience 

Contract: Full-time 

Department: Support Business Unit (Performance Sportswear & Intimates Apparel) 

Reports to: Project Manager, Support BU 

Right to work: You must already have the right to work in the UK. We are not able to sponsor visas for this role.

About RHEON Labs

RHEON Labs is an ingredient technology company that develops patented strain-rate-sensitive polymer technologies designed to improve comfort, support, protection, and performance. Our materials are integrated into products used by some of the world's leading sportswear, apparel, and protective equipment brands.

The Support Business Unit specialises in the integration of RHEON™ technology into performance sportswear, working directly with global brands, garment manufacturers, and material suppliers to develop commercially viable products that deliver measurable performance benefits.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Computational Designer to create parametric RHEON™ artworks for performance apparel. Working in Rhino and Grasshopper with our existing design toolkit, you will combine body-mapped data, test results and brand design language into artworks that go into sports bras, running tights, shorts and base layers.

RHEON™ is strain-rate-sensitive, which means it behaves differently depending on how fast it is deformed. Designing with it means working out where a body moves and how quickly, then shaping the laser cut geometry to match.

This is an early-career role, and we have written it that way deliberately. We are not expecting you to have taken apparel products to production before. We will teach you the garment side, the material and the manufacturing.

Key Responsibilities

Computational Design

• Combine body-mapped data, test results and brand design language into RHEON™ film components.
• Work within our existing Grasshopper toolkit to generate and adapt artworks across garment styles and size ranges.
• Produce design variants and size runs quickly, so ideas can be reviewed and tested in days rather than weeks.
• Prepare clean, production-ready cutting files, and keep your work organised so others can pick it up.

Product Development & Testing

• Generate product concepts, prototypes, and RHEON™ patterns for a range of clients.
• Translate brand design language and performance objectives into practical design options.
• Create renders, visualisations and concept presentations that show brand partners how RHEON™ could work in their products.
• Conduct data analysis of swatch- and product-level test data alongside wear-test feedback and biomechanical findings, and turn the results into actionable development improvements.

Customer & Partner Development

• Work with sportswear brands on live development projects, alongside your project manager.
• Join customer meetings, workshops and development reviews, as required.
• Build strong working relationships with brand design, development, innovation, and sourcing teams.

Working with Manufacturing Partners

• Work with garment manufacturers and material suppliers on production readiness, with support from the wider project team.
• Help prepare files and specifications for manufacturing trials and production runs.
• Troubleshoot technical, manufacturing, and product performance issues throughout development and production.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Strong proficiency in Rhino & Grasshopper, with at least 1 year’s experience.
• A portfolio of parametric work you have built yourself. We will ask about it in detail, so please be ready to talk through how your definitions work.
• We are open on background. Computational design skills turn up in architecture, product and industrial design, engineering, digital fabrication and computational arts, and in people who are entirely self-taught. Any of these are welcome.
• Able to clearly communicate designs and design intent to a range of audiences.
• Precision. Geometry that goes to a manufacturer needs to be right.
• Curiosity about materials, the human body and how things are made.

Desirable

• Experience within performance sportswear, apparel, footwear, or wearable products.
• Knowledge of biomechanics, human performance, athlete testing, or apparel construction.
• Familiarity with sports bra, running apparel, compression garment, or base-layer development.
• Experience with laser cutting, CNC or other digital fabrication, including preparing files for production.
• Creating tools & plug-ins and/or scripting in Python or C# within Grasshopper.
• Rendering and visualisation, with a preference towards the garment space (e.g. Clo3D, Marvelous Designer, KeyShot, Blender, Photoshop or similar).

What Success Looks Like

• Within three months: You are producing laser cut artworks in Grasshopper that the team is using in live brand projects.
• Within six months: You are turning body-mapping and test data into artworks with limited supervision, and the design cycle on your projects is getting shorter.
• Within twelve months: You are working on multiple projects concurrently and you are trusted to take a brief from data through to cutting file on your own.

What We Offer

• 30 days (plus bank holidays) holiday allowance.
• Regular Social Events.
• Rhino and Grasshopper licences, plus access to our lab, laser cutting and testing equipment.
• A genuinely unusual design problem, and a material almost nobody else gets to work with.
• A collaborative team environment, where your work ends up in products made by brands you have heard of.
• Support to keep learning. We will back training and time spent developing your computational design skills.

This role sits at the intersection of computational design, material science and sport, helping some of the world’s leading brands bring next-generation performance apparel to market.

Please note that the portfolio matters more to us than the CV.

Please include at least one piece of parametric work you built yourself, with a short note on how the definition works and why you approached it that way. Screenshots of the canvas are welcome.

Shortlisted candidates will be asked to complete a short Grasshopper design exercise that is in line with what the work at RHEON might look like.

Applications close on 18th Sep.