Senior Product Designer

About Ember

We're building the future of public transport — convenient, affordable, connected and zero-emission. Our goal is to make it easier and more enjoyable to get from A to B with Ember than it is with your own car.

Ember is a tech company, not a traditional bus operator. We've built a platform that coordinates our entire operation – everything from monitoring vehicles and controlling chargers to selling tickets and calculating ETAs. This allows us to use electric buses more intensively than anyone else in the world, leading to a massive reduction in emissions. It also helps us provide a much better passenger experience, with innovative features like demand-responsive stops.

We’re still tiny, with a handful of routes and 38 buses. The challenge is to scale this 100× whilst staying lean, increasing efficiency and delivering an even better product experience. We’ve raised equity from some of Europe’s leading climate VCs and are looking for mission-driven individuals who want to get on board and help take us to the next level.

The role

As a product designer at Ember, you’ll play a key role in shaping both our platform and the overall user experience. Working closely with engineers, you’ll design and deliver features that are intuitive, elegant, and that make a measurable difference in people’s daily lives. We’re a product-led company — thoughtful design runs through everything we do, from our website to bus stop signage and internal tools. Your role will be broad and impactful, spanning customer-facing features and behind-the-scenes systems.

What you will do

You’ll be joining a small, talent-dense team working on one of humanity’s most pressing challenges: decarbonisation. You’ll work on a wide variety of projects that touch all aspects of our business. Examples may include:

• Designing interface flows and components for our customer-facing app.
• Speaking with mechanics to shape features like wheel re-torque tracking.
• Researching materials and wireless charging pads to help design best-in-class seating.
• Thinking deeply about the typical day of charging hub staff, to create task management tools.
• Collaborating with engineers to define data models and design how connections are presented to passengers.

Diversity and equality

At Ember, we support diversity across our team and customers. We work to ensure every employee feels respected and able to give their best, whether temporary, part-time or full-time. We’re happy to offer flexible working patterns where they make sense, are compassionate when it comes to time off and offer enhanced maternity and paternity leave.

Read more about our approach in our Equal Opportunities Policy.

What’s on offer

As well as a salary of £40,000 - £80,000 per annum, depending on your experience and skills, you'll be eligible for share options. You'll be expected to work from our office in central Edinburgh most days — because we value in-person communication, but there's flexibility around doing the odd day from home.

How do I apply?

Send your CV and a cover letter telling us why you're interested in the role.

Who we're looking for

You should have a desire to get involved early in Ember's growth story, with a real opportunity to make your mark. Your approach to work and thinking is more important to us than specific industry experience. You should think that the following sounds a lot like you:

• Strong background: You likely have several years of experience in a high-performing environment, but we value ability and motivation even more.
• Talented designer: You’re a thoughtful designer with strong core skills — including producing high-fidelity mockups. Graphic design experience is a bonus. Any work you can share is very welcome.
• First principles thinker: You like to think things through from the ground up and are comfortable challenging conventional wisdom. You don’t just pass ideas from one part of the business to another — you’re analytical, and able to break complex processes into simple, intuitive features.
• Good taste: You have a good eye for elegant, simple experiences — and know how to create them. Feel free to include examples of products you admire and why.
• Engineering awareness: You have a good intuition for how difficult a design will be to implement — and how to make it simpler. You think about edge cases, error messages, and the messy parts of the experience.
• Motivation: You’re excited by our mission and the chance to make a tangible difference in a small, fast-growing company. Bus services are a real-world, tangible product where your work will affect people’s daily lives.