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Product Design Lead, Wayfinder

San Francisco, CA

The Company

Sofar is on a mission to connect the world’s oceans. We design, build, and deploy the largest privately owned network of marine weather sensors to power the world’s best marine weather forecasts. Our data helps our customers to increase efficiency and reduce emissions, delivering tools to governments and other stakeholders to understand impacts of climate change on extreme weather and ocean health. We live on Planet Ocean, and our goal is to create the ocean intelligence needed to ensure a sustainable future.

The Role

  • You will lead the end-to-end design of Wayfinder, helping commercial shipping operators and captains navigate complex decisions with clarity and confidence
  • You will perform UXR to uncover needs, validate concepts with rapid prototyping and iteration and bring clarity to complex problems
  • You will partner with our Head of Product to prioritize the most impactful opportunities for our customers - balancing user value, technical feasibility, and business goals
  • You will champion design excellence shape our design systems and influence cross-functional decisions through clear storytelling.
  • You will collaborate with a diverse group of experts, including routers, customer success, product managers, engineers and scientists, to create intuitive, high-impact user experiences

About You

  • You are passionate about making a difference in the world through their work
  • You have 7+ years of experience in interaction or product design preferably within software in a fast-paced startup or tech company.
  • You've led the design of intuitive data visualization and analytics experiences, balancing usability with complexity
  • You’ve designed and shipped SaaS products, and are confident in guiding the design process from concept through delivery.
  • You seek to understand the why before the how, and grounds your work in terms of user problems, business priorities and product strategy.
  • You’re a systems thinker who brings clarity to complex problems through thoughtful, user-centered design.
  • You have a track record of delivering products that drive meaningful business impact in complex, real-world industries.
  • You have a strong understanding of design fundamentals - typography, color theory, and layout. Experience with GIS or mapping is a plus.
  • You’re proficient with tools like Figma, Sketch or Framer and familiar with the front-end implementation (e.g., React, MUI, etc).

Estimated Salary Range

  • $160,000 - $190,000 
  • The range listed is what we reasonably expect to pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and may be modified in the future. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, experience, and equity package.

Sofar's Commitment to Climate Justice

We at Sofar Ocean acknowledge that careers in the marine sciences “... have traditionally been, and remain, non-diverse work environments”, thereby limiting the entry and prosperity of underrepresented groups in the space. (Johri et al., 2021) Many of these same groups are disproportionately affected by climate change, and are often excluded from decision making that directly address their interests and needs.

We are committed to addressing these climate injustices and highly encourage people who identify as women, LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) to apply

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It is the responsibility of every employee to contribute to a positive work environment through cooperative and professional interactions with co-workers, customers, and vendors.

Equal Employment Opportunity

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other factors prohibited by law.

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