Product Designer, Defense
Own end-to-end product design for Defense products spanning real-time operator interfaces and enterprise autonomy platforms. The role requires 8+ years of product design experience, strong research and systems-design judgment, engineer collaboration, and U.S. citizenship with eligibility for a security clearance.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Own the design of one or more Defense products end to end, from research and interaction design through visual design, prototyping, launch, and iteration.
- Conduct primary research with warfighters, analysts, engineers, and partners.
- Design real-time edge interfaces for command, control, and situational awareness on tablets, ground stations, and shipboard or airborne environments.
- Reduce cognitive load and shorten the decide-act loop under contested communications and limited compute.
- Design trust, approval, and escalation patterns for agentic autonomy while keeping humans meaningfully involved.
- Design enterprise tools for building, simulating, validating, and shipping autonomy.
- Extend the Defense design system across real-time and enterprise workflows.
- Turn one-off program deliveries into repeatable products.
- Represent design at demos, program reviews, and industry events, and help grow the design practice.
- Travel up to 25%, including internationally, to bases, ranges, and customer sites.
Requirements
- 8+ years of product design experience across at least two meaningfully different environments, product types, stages, or customer segments.
- Track record of shipping products end to end, including research, launch, iteration, and prioritization decisions.
- Strong research instincts and ability to learn a new domain and turn findings into design direction.
- Portfolio demonstrating judgment on information density, decision interfaces, and multi-user workflows.
- Ability to learn and design for technically complex systems.
- Strong collaboration with engineers, EMs, and technical leads on tradeoffs.
- Clear communication, including design briefs and presentations for senior leadership.
- Proficiency with modern prototyping tools.
- U.S. citizenship.
- Must hold or be eligible for a U.S. security clearance; TS/SCI is the target and sponsorship is available.
Nice-to-haves
- Active DoD Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI clearance.
- Experience with defense, intelligence, maritime, aerospace, or first-responder users.
- Background in C2, air traffic, cockpit/EFB, geospatial, or real-time simulation interfaces.
- Experience with developer platforms, MLOps, data labeling, or test and observability tools.
- Design experience for edge or constrained-compute environments.
- Experience shaping trust and approval patterns for AI copilots or agentic systems.
- Prior military, intelligence, or fleet operational service.
- Experience helping build a design practice from the ground up.
Compensation & Benefits
- Base salary range: $150,000–$200,000.
- Compensation includes base salary, equity, and medical, dental, vision, life, and disability benefits.
- 401(k) match, learning and wellness stipends, and paid time off.
Skills
Product Design, User Research, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Prototyping, Design Systems, Information Architecture, Human-Machine Interaction, MLOps, Geospatial Interfaces, Simulation, Figma
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