Director, Industrial Design

YOUR MISSION 

Leaders like you are essential to this mission – to inspire, define, and build. This is some of the most meaningful work you’ll ever do, in an industry devoted to protecting the people you care about. 

We’re looking for an inspirational creative leader to found our industrial product design function and build the team around it. With a well-established and growing software design team we’re now turning our attention to our critical hardware needs. You’ll sit alongside the engineers designing and building spacecraft and space-based interceptors, bringing your design aesthetics to the toughest hardware problems around, designed to operate flawlessly in the most challenging domain. 

You’ll report directly to our Creative Director who’s building this function for people who care as much about the craft as the mission. 

WHY THIS ROLE  

There’s no established playbook for how space security hardware should look. Most on-orbit hardware looks the way it does because function dictated every element. We believe building a product compelling design language can play a huge part in making our hardware express its function and perform better. 

The programs that invest here gain a measurable advantage: in recruiting, in customer confidence, and in the engineering discipline that visible craft quietly enforces. 

This is a founding seat. You’ll define what industrial design means here, set the standard, hire the team, and do it while the hardware is still early enough for it to matter. Your work will be inspected at the highest levels of government and military with some of it making it to orbit. 

If you’ve ever wanted your craft to carry real weight, this is that job. 

RESPONSIBILITIES — design leadership for hardware 

• Establish industrial design at True Anomaly: the function, the standard, and the working relationship with hardware engineering 

• Own the design language of our hardware products through your team and your personal work, You’ll champion great design across the company by demonstrating its value and advocating to our exec and engineering teams.  

• Hire and lead a high-performing team of industrial and product designers 

• Look to the future by visualizing visually stunning new concepts, designed to start conversations and inspire. Push us out of our comfort zone and challenge the art of the possible. 

• Bring design into engineering and architecture decisions early, working with product engineering leadership early to influence and build great design into our hardware from the beginning. 

QUALIFICATIONS - We hire for talent and potential, not pedigree. 

• Show us a portfolio of hardware you led or shaped, with a clear account of what you decided and why 

• Demonstrate experience leading designers, from hiring to mentoring 

• Fluency with engineering constraint. You’ll be working with people solving structural, thermal, and other problems, you need to be credible with them 

• Consumer, automotive, aerospace, robotics, medical, and industrial equipment backgrounds all fit. Defense and space knowledge is great, we don’t expect it 

• An active security clearance is a bonus, not a requirement. 

WHAT WE EXPECT 

• Leverage your experience to work quickly and efficiently, we’re a lean team, everyone needs to pitch in and move fast. You’ll be building a team, and until that team exists, you’ll be doing the work yourself 

• Take ownership of design programs and see them through concept to final execution 

If you like this role but your skills or experience don’t quite fit… well apply anyway, or look at our other hardware design role and see if that’s a better match: SENIOR/STAFF INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER 

COMPENSATION 

• Base Salary: $205,000 - $320,000 

• Equity + Benefits including Health, Dental, Vision, HRA/HSA options, PTO and paid holidays, 401K, Parental Leave  

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience 

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS 

• Work Location—Successful candidates will be located near Long Beach, CA or Denver, CO. However, we would consider remote within the US for the right candidate.

• Work environment—the work environment; temperature, noise level, inside or outside, or other factors that will affect the person's working conditions while performing the job. 

• Physical demands—the physical demands of the job, including bending, sitting, lifting and driving. 

This position will be open until it is successfully filled. To submit your application, please follow the directions below. #LI-Remote