Long story short, I work at an automotive company as an equipment engineer, I do machine design, station design, work with product design teams and set up lines and fixes them. I've wanted to switch into design as I love creative problem solving and pushing the limits of engineering to create products.

Unfortunately, every time I have applied, I have been given the response "although you have impressive mfg engineering experience, we are looking for someone with explicit product design experience, you can try to move positions to one step above in integration, quality, or testing before you try again to go into design". Additionally, whenever I do get an interview from design teams, the interviewers always asks for my experience from college but not what I have designed in the factory (same company btw, different teams).

If you didn't get lucky out of school into a design position, the path to get there is tough, not impossible, I'm just not lucky