EVS Sports Protective Gear Jobs: How to Get Hired at a Brand Behind Every Major Action Sport

Information Leak

When you strap on a knee brace before a moto session, you are trusting engineering you never see. Someone spent months figuring out how to make a hinge move the way a human knee moves, how to spread the force of a hard landing across a shell instead of a joint, and how to build all of it at a price a rider can actually afford. That work happens inside protective-gear brands, and right now one of the most storied names in the business has a seat open for exactly that kind of builder. We want to walk you through EVS Sports and its live Product Developer / Engineer opening as a case study in how protective-equipment companies actually staff up, so you can see where you might fit.

Why EVS Sports Is Worth Studying

EVS was founded in 1985 by riders who were tired of blowing out their knees. That frustration produced the AMX-5, the world's first motocross-specific knee brace, and it set the tone for everything the brand has done since. Over the decades EVS grew from a single product into a full line of power-sports protection: knee braces, neck supports, chest and back protection, and more. If you want the origin story in detail, this EVS history is a solid read, and the company tells it in its own words on the EVS Sports about page.

Today EVS is headquartered in Rancho Dominguez, California, in the greater Los Angeles area. It sits alongside Lift Safety inside the Fairway Import-Export family of brands. EVS builds protective gear for power sports, and Lift Safety builds protective equipment for construction and industrial work. That pairing matters for a job seeker, because it means the engineering knowledge inside the building crosses two markets. A person who understands impact protection for a rider also understands impact protection for a job site, and that dual application shows up directly in the current opening.

What the Product Developer / Engineer Job Actually Involves

The live Product Developer / Engineer opening is one of the clearest examples we have seen of what "bringing a product to life" really means. The person in this seat bridges concept to mass production for high-performance sports gear and industrial safety equipment. That is a wide arc. It starts with an idea or a sketch and ends with thousands of finished units coming off a production line, and the developer is responsible for coordinating the design, prototyping, and validation work in between.

Read between the lines of a job like this and you can see the daily reality:

• Engineering skill. You are working with tolerances, load paths, and manufacturability. A protective product that cannot be built consistently at volume is not a product, it is a prototype.
• Human ergonomics. Gear has to fit real bodies that bend, sweat, crash, and move under stress. Understanding how a body articulates is not a nice-to-have, it is the core of the discipline.
• Composite and impact-absorbing materials. Foams, shells, and composites all behave differently when force hits them. Knowing which material to specify, and why, is what separates protection that works from protection that only looks the part.
• Validation. Protective gear has to be tested and proven, not assumed. The developer coordinates the prototyping and validation loop until the product performs the way it is supposed to.

This is a builder's job. It rewards people who like to hold the thing in their hands, break it, learn why it broke, and make the next one better.

The Jobs That Exist in the Protective-Gear Space

The Product Developer / Engineer seat is one job on a much larger team, and understanding the full org helps you find your own way in. Across protective-equipment brands you will typically find several job families:

• Product development and engineering. The people who take concepts to production, run prototyping, and own materials and fit.
• Industrial and product design. The people who shape how a product looks, feels, and functions in the hand.
• Product management. The people who own a line, decide what gets built, and connect the market to the workshop.
• Graphics and brand. The people who give the gear its visual identity and carry the story to riders.
• Project coordination and operations. The people who keep timelines, samples, and vendors moving so nothing stalls.

The best way to see those job families is to look at the real people who fill them, and EVS has a deep bench on Malakye.

The People Who Build the Product

On the product design and development side, EVS is led by Jason Barnes, Senior Vice President of Product Design, whose seat sits at the top of the discipline the current opening feeds into. Working in that world are Pearson Castner, a Senior Product Developer doing the exact kind of concept-to-production work the open job describes, and Joseph Parisi, a Product Manager who owns the line-level decisions that tell development what to build next. If you want to understand a job before you apply, studying the people already doing it is one of the smartest moves you can make, and it pairs well with our guide on how to use AI to research a company before you apply.

The Creative and Brand Team

Protective gear lives or dies on trust, and trust is built partly through brand. EVS runs a full creative operation led by Chris Sukraw, Creative Director, with Taz Sobotka as Global Brand Director and Warren Johnson as Marketing Communications Director steering how the brand speaks. The design bench includes Senior Graphic Designers Tucker Crisfield and Sergio Aguilar, who also shoots photography, along with Graphic Designer Arnold Barnachea. Keeping the whole machine on schedule is Project Coordinator Brittany Forsyth. If graphics is your lane, the discipline is close cousins with the digital-design shift we covered in our piece on 3D design and digital patternmaking at Speedo.

Proof That Real Careers Get Built Here

One thing we always tell job seekers: look for tenure. A company where people build long careers is a company worth chasing. EVS shows that pattern clearly. Kris Petrat spent years as a Design Manager, and Richard Liu put in real time as a Senior Product Developer. People who stay, and people who grow into bigger seats, are the strongest signal that a brand invests in its team. That is exactly the kind of place worth putting near the top of your list, which is why we built our guide on how to build your action sports company hit-list.

How to Get Hired

Here is the honest path in. First, know the product. Walk into any conversation able to talk about how a knee brace hinges, why a certain foam is used in a chest protector, or how a shell distributes an impact. Second, show your work. For engineering and development seats, a portfolio of things you have actually designed, prototyped, or tested beats a resume full of adjectives. Third, understand the two-market angle: EVS and Lift Safety share protective-equipment knowledge across power sports and industrial safety, so if you can speak to impact protection broadly, you widen your value. Fourth, prepare like a professional. Run through our mock interview guide before you ever sit down with a hiring manager.

And if the exact opening is not your fit, do not walk away. Study the jobs, study the people, and keep sharpening. When you are ready, the current Product Developer / Engineer opening at EVS Sports is waiting, and there are hundreds more like it on the Malakye jobs board. We have been connecting the action sports and outdoor industry to jobs like this since 2002. Explore the companies directory, find the brands you love, and go put yourself in the room.