Jim Mielke founded Mielke Design in Silicon Valley in 1984 after earning his bachelor's degree in design and working for a year at a tech start-up in Silicon Valley and another year at an East Coast design firm, NCR Corporation in San Diego. Mielke excels in combining the practical details of mechanical engineering and Design for Manufacturing with the aesthetics and elegance of industrial design. In contrast to a traditional design team that transfers industrial design concepts to a different engineering team, the simultaneous application of design and engineering yields comprehensive and uncompromised solutions. Early in his career, Jim Mielke discovered that he preferred doing actual design work to managing other designers and going to meetings.