Senior Staff Designer, Shield AI

• Master’s in design, HCI, or demonstrated work experience at a comparable level of expertise
• 8+ years of professional experience in product/UX design with a track record of shipped, user-facing products
• A portfolio demonstrating exceptional interaction design
• Expertise with modern design tools (Figma, ProtoPie, etc.) and workflows (design systems, component libraries)
• Experience leading product initiatives end-to-end - from exploration to final implementation
• Strong systems thinking and the ability to scale and improve design frameworks
• Excellent communication skills, able to clearly present design rationale to non-design stakeholders
• Experience designing developer-facing software tools
• Passion for mentoring others and cultivating design team culture and process

Desirable

• The Staff/Sr. Staff Product Designer role within Shield AI’s Hivemind organization is responsible for solving complex User Experience and Product Design problems associated with the end-to-end user experience of developing, deploying, testing and evaluating autonomy solutions
• The core products developed by the Hivemind organization target multiple user personae, ranging from the external end-user (the “Operator” of autonomous systems), to the Test engineer (who tests and evaluates autonomous systems in software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop and real-world flight test environments), to the AI engineer (who develops and tests autonomy architectures)
• Significant portions of the product are are best described as developer facing software product (i.e. SDKs, CLIs) and require contribution from designers that have relevant experience
• Other portions of the product leverage web technologies and UIs to support configuration management, scenario design, mission planning, mission rehearsal, debrief, and test and evaluation process
• The supported workflows with these products range from the highly visual/experiential experience of the operator using a ground-control-station (GCS) client to mission plan and command-and-control, to autonomy engineers working within the Integrated Development Environment, to Test Engineers using the web portal and extensible CLI tool
• As such, Hivemind is a highly complex and technical product that enables complex workflows across multiple collaborating teams
• Lead end-to-end design for high-impact product areas, from strategy and concept to final implementation
• Drive and uphold design quality through strong ideation, systems thinking, and refinement of shared design standards
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Customer Experience to define product direction and user needs
• Facilitate design strategy workshops and collaboration to drive alignment and momentum
• Influence cross-functional planning, roadmap prioritization, and long-term product vision through design shaping rituals
• Advocate for the user experience in company-wide discussions; help shape how product success is defined
• Mentor other designers through feedback, partnering and thought leadership
• Lead design reviews to collect feedback from engineering, product and customer surrogates, and align features and capabilities