Job Overview:
The Product Designer designs, evaluates and iterates new product ideas for new product growth driving expansion and revenue growth for Exostar's Aerospace and Defense network and adjacent opportunities. You will work with a discovery Product Manager and Engineer in short cycles, producing designs that let customers react to real product experience before anything is built. Many of Exostar's customers are experts in complex, regulated workflows while others have limited expertise but must operate in the same complex environment. The product has two sets of users with different needs, buyers and suppliers. This role suits a designer who does their best work in early-stage, high-uncertainty conditions.
Responsibilities: Your day if you join us:- Research: Join customer interviews, experiments, and usability sessions and form your own view of how buyers and suppliers work today.
- Two-Sided Experience Design: Map the journeys of buyers and suppliers and relevant workflows and design the experience for each side of the network, including onboarding, supplier profiles, search, and the signals that show a supplier can be trusted.
- Prototyping: Produce prototypes quickly, from low-fidelity sketches to clickable prototypes, and work with the prototype engineer on coded prototypes where they are needed.
- Testing: Plan and run usability tests with customers and turn the findings into design changes within days rather than weeks.
- AI in Design Work: Use AI to speed up research synthesis, prototyping, and design variations. Design AI-enabled experiences that explain results and keep a human in the loop.
- Complex Workflows: Simplify complex problems including compliance, qualification, and sourcing workflows so that a company new to defense can follow them without extensive handholding.
- Product-led Growth: Design intuitive, low-friction product experiences that drive self-service user onboarding, activation, adoption, and expansion, using customer insights and behavioral data to continuously optimize product-led growth across the B2B SaaS customer lifecycle.
- Accessibility and Security: Design for accessibility and for the security expectations of a regulated environment.
- Design System: Follow Exostar's design system and brand standards, and flag where the system needs to change for new products.
- Gate and Handoff: Prepare design materials for the gate review, and hand validated designs to product and engineering teams for scaling.
Qualifications: You are a great fit for this role if you
:Must-Haves- 6+ years in product design for B2B SaaS, with a portfolio that shows end-to-end work on complex products.
- Experience designing a two-sided marketplace or network product, with different user types on each side.
- Strong user research and usability testing skills.
- Fluency with modern design and prototyping tools, such as Figma.
- Experience designing enterprise workflows with multiple roles, permissions, and approval steps.
- Ability to work in short cycles and make design decisions with limited information.
- Clear communication with product managers, engineers, and executives.
Preferred Experience- Experience with enterprise workflow products, such as supply chain systems for sourcing, procurement, supplier management, order and shipment management, demand planning, or supply chain visibility.
- Compliance, security, or other regulated product environments.
- Familiarity with WCAG accessibility standards.
- Experience building or extending a design system.
Personal Attributes- Curious about how customers work and comfortable spending time with them.
- Willing to throw away work that testing shows is wrong.
- Collaborative, and at ease working closely with a small team.
- Straightforward about trade-offs between speed and polish.
Location: Herndon, VA, Cincinnati, OH, (Hybrid 3x/week)
The pay range for this position is $130,000k - $150,000k/yr; however, the final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, skills, qualifications, and location. Exostar also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance, EAP, Flexible Spending Accounts, 401(k) matching, flexible time off and sick leave).
