Derek
Gross.
Mechanical Design Engineer
I design vehicle structures that are safe, manufacturable, and slippery through the air — and I do my best work on things I genuinely love.
- Discipline
- Mechanical design
- Currently
- Body design · Honda
- Based in
- Marysville, Ohio
- Education
- BSME · Purdue (IUPUI)
- Specialty
- Bumpers, hoods & underbody
- Off the clock
- On a bike, outside
Engineering I enjoy
Work on what you love, enjoy doing it, and the good work follows.
I’m a body design engineer at Honda, where I lead underbody design — bumpers, floor, and frame structures — and own hood and bumper design on an electric vehicle program. Before that I worked on Cybertruck production at Tesla, built fixtures at Cummins, and designed building systems at DLZ.
I believe the best engineering comes from people who enjoy the work. For me that’s anything that moves: cars, bikes, and the air flowing around them. When I’m not in CATIA, I’m usually outside on two wheels.
Projects
01Bumper Air-Curtain Duct
A bumper duct that channels air through the fascia to form an air curtain around the wheel and tire — validated in the wind tunnel.
Bumper Rigidity Design Guideline
Standardized design criteria that balance pedestrian-impact compliance against bumper sag — now used by the body design team from day one.
Cybertruck Manufacturing Cells
Took eight vendor manufacturing cells at Gigafactory Texas from drawing review to installation on a production deadline.
05Rocker Lever Measuring Table
A clamping fixture that holds a 15 L engine rocker lever on a datum so two offset surfaces can be measured quickly and repeatably.
Where I've built
- Aug 2024 – PresentHonda Development and ManufacturingMechanical (Body) Design Engineer
- Oct 2023 – Aug 2024Bicycle Garage IndyBicycle Service & Sales
- May 2023 – Aug 2023TeslaMechanical Engineering Intern
- May 2022 – Nov 2022CumminsMechanical Engineering Co-Op
- May 2021 – Aug 2021DLZMechanical Engineering Intern
Fig. 2 · Race-ready specAll things
bicycles.
Bikes are where my love of mechanical design started, and they're still how I spend most of my time outside. Racing taught me to obsess over grams and watts; wrenching taught me that a design is only as good as it is to service.
- 01
Competitive cyclist
Racing nationwide with Team Elevate Endurance since 2018, and organizing group rides for teammates and the community.
- 02
Team board member
Appointed to the board in 2024 — co-designing custom team kits and sponsor placement, costing merchandise, and running social content.
- 03
Bike mechanic
Spent a year at Bicycle Garage Indy building, tuning, and overhauling bikes to race-ready spec.
Toolbox
Design & Analysis
| 01 | Mechanical Design |
| 02 | GD&T |
| 03 | Tolerance Stack-Up Analysis |
| 04 | Sheet Metal Part Design |
| 05 | Injection Mold Design |
| 06 | Additive Manufacturing Design |
| 07 | Aerodynamics & Wind Tunnel Testing |
| 08 | FEA (CATIA, Abaqus) |
Process & Quality
| 01 | DFM & DFA |
| 02 | FMEA |
| 03 | Measurement Systems Analysis |
| 04 | Process Flow Improvement |
| 05 | Project Management |
Software
| 01 | CATIA V4 / V5 / V6 |
| 02 | Siemens NX |
| 03 | SolidWorks |
| 04 | PTC Creo Parametric |
| 05 | Autodesk Inventor |
| 06 | MATLAB |
| 07 | Microsoft Office |
Let's build something that moves.
Open to conversations about vehicle design, product engineering, and anything with wheels.