Job Description

IDEO North America currently has multiple Industrial Design openings at the Sr. Designer and Design Lead levels. These roles may be based in any one of our three North American studios: Cambridge, Chicago or San Francisco. Due to business needs, we require unrestricted US work authorization to be eligible for this role. Please apply with a resume, cover letter, and portfolio (URL or PDF) no later than Sunday, November 21st, 2021, and indicate your location preference in the application question. No applications will be accepted after Sunday, November 21st, so we encourage you to submit your application well in advance of the deadline.

The Role

IDEO North America is in search of an Industrial Design Lead who will create products that have meaningful impact on people’s lives, is able to connect the dots between desirability, feasibility, and viability, & can lead clients and design teams through the industrial design phases of a project. Design Leads are frequently project leaders. In other words, they are responsible for leading one client project at a time, together with a team of three to five IDEO designers. Project leads at IDEO have a significant amount of freedom and responsibility. Your job is to deliver great work to the client, build a trusting relationship, and foster a creative and productive environment for the team. Industrial Design Leads will lead project teams to help our clients apply human-centered design in spaces of new opportunity, new audiences or markets, and new technologies. Industrial Design Leads thrive on delivering products and services that go beyond what’s in the market, often giving glimpses into the near and far future.

As an Industrial Design Lead, you will support the creation of intelligent, immersive solutions that may range from products and product ecosystems in the medical field, to the future of transportation or consumer electronics. You’ll leverage both technical skills and strategic, systems-level thinking to help project teams with IDEO’s Industrial Design craft output. We count on you to create tangible design expressions, and communicate the essence of these ideas. Our ideal candidate is not just passionate about designing products, but also about connecting the dots between service design, business design, and product design in meaningful ways.

As an IDEO Industrial Designer, You Will:

• Create tangible design expressions for a new product, service, or consumer experience leveraging excellent sketching, form development, 2D/3D visualization, CAD modeling, and graphic skills
• Bring a passion for experience design and prototyping, collaborating with others to blur the lines between hardware and software, the tangible and intangible
• Create presentation deliverables that may include research summaries, sketches, user scenarios, physical prototypes, product renderings, animations, and appearance models
• Create outcomes for our clients and partners from early concept and at times, through to production, taking responsibility for the production output, schedule, and maintaining design integrity from start to finish

Within IDEO Design Teams, You Will:

• Practice design in a human-centered way, lead with curiosity and empathy, and identify and solve problems on projects focusing across a variety of industries
• Become part of a culture that lets you both learn and teach, and collaborate with people outside of your immediate area of expertise, such as design researchers, interaction designers, data scientists, business designers, organizational designers, software designers, and visual designers
• Build an understanding of IDEO’s client organizations, and partner with clients to drive change and innovation within their offerings and organizations
• Translate human-centered research insights into actionable experiences for people, building the structure of delightful products and services
• Be involved in all aspects of the design process: user research activities, brainstorming, concept development, rapid prototyping, implementation and realization
• Identify opportunities for user delight within a broad range of domains from Health, Food, Mobility, Learning, Financial Services, Consumer Products & Retail, and Media & Technology

Experience, Skills, & Mindsets We’d Be Excited By:

Your role as an Industrial Design Lead will vary from project to project, client relationship to client relationship, but will likely include some of the activities listed below. Successful candidates should have relevant skills, mindsets, and experiences that will enable you to leverage all of the following:

• Knowledge of the product development cycle and manufacturing execution
• Concept generation, sketching, quick prototyping, 3D CAD (fluency in Rhino or SolidWorks), rendering and presentation software
• Working closely with engineers, and within manufacturing and realization constraints
• Translating user needs, technical realities, brand attributes, and business requirements into compelling tangible products
• Practicing human-centered design rooted in user research, leading with curiosity and empathy
• Working alongside and in front of clients and multidisciplinary teammates across all stages of a design project
• Rapid prototyping at various levels of fidelity, understanding that success comes sooner by trying and failing

*Bonus if you have experience in packaging design for Food or Beauty, or have designed impactful solutions in Health or Life Sciences

What does IDEO offer you?

IDEO is a place unlike any other. It’s a place where you can solve diverse, complex challenges alongside thoughtful, intelligent individuals who lead with curiosity, empathy, and optimism. We work hard, but we also intentionally craft moments that allow our community to pause, create, and connect. We encourage our community to bring their whole selves to work, respect the need for work-life balance, and allow for autonomy in the design process and your career.

At IDEO, we are committed to the work of advancing diversity, equity and inclusion within our organization and in the world.

Our purpose of having disproportionate, world-changing impact through design is directly connected to our ability to bring many different perspectives to the table. This applies to our candidates, the people we hire, the clients and customers we serve, and the communities we learn from in our research.

As a human-centered organization, we are committed to working with and designing for people of every race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status, physical ability or attribute, religion, national origin, or political belief. We recognize that this commitment requires ongoing work and sustained attention, as well as adaptation to new insights and best practices.

Application Instructions

To apply, please submit your resume, cover letter (yes, we read them!), and sample portfolio (URL or PDF). In your cover letter, please tell us more about your interest in Industrial Design at IDEO, notably where you see alignment between your experience and this opportunity.

In your portfolio, please show:

• Strong Projects: new products, interesting challenges with unique solutions
• Design Process: research, strategy, concept generation, iterations
• Human-Centricity: how you incorporated user research, input, and testing into your designs
• Experimental Work and Explorations: we’d love to see what ended on the cutting room floor
• Client Services: evidence of ability to balance client expectations (or other design, regulatory, technical constraints) along with design intent

Equal Opportunity Employer

IDEO is an equal opportunity employer; applicants are considered for all roles without regard to race, color, religious creed, sex, national origin, citizenship status, age, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, marital, parental, veteran or military status, unfavorable military discharge, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state or local law.

Apply now