Product Designer

Default Brand; Herndon, Cincinnati (VA, OH); On-site; USD 130,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

401(k) matching

Flexible time off

Sick leave

Employee assistance program

Job summary

Exostar is seeking a Product Designer to drive growth through user-centered design for our Aerospace & Defense network. You’ll collaborate with a discovery PM and engineers, rapidly iterating in short cycles to ship impactful experiences for buyers and suppliers.

You’ll lead research, map workflows, prototype, and test designs, applying AI to accelerate synthesis and variations while ensuring accessibility and security in regulated environments.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in product design for B2B SaaS
• Experience designing a two-sided marketplace or network product
• 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

Responsibilities

• Research: Join customer interviews, experiments, and usability sessions and form your view of buyers and suppliers today.
• Two-Sided Experience Design: Map journeys and design experiences for buyers and suppliers, onboarding and trust signals.
• Prototyping: Produce prototypes from low-fidelity to clickable, collaborate with prototype engineer.
• Testing: Plan and run usability tests and iterate quickly.
• AI in Design: Use AI to speed up research, prototyping, and design variations with human-in-the-loop explanations.
• Complex Workflows: Simplify complex workflows like compliance, qualification, and sourcing for new defense entrants.
• Product-led Growth: Design low-friction experiences for self-service onboarding, activation, adoption and expansion.
• Accessibility and Security: Design for accessibility and regulated environments.
• Design System: Follow Exostar's design system and flag needed changes.
• Gate and Handoff: Prepare design materials for gate reviews and hand off to teams.

Skills

User research

Usability testing

Two-sided marketplace design

Communication

Decision making in short cycles

Tools

Figma

Prototyping tools

Job description

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.

• 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

• 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.

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).

Exostar - The Company:

Exostar's cloud-based platforms create exclusive communities within the Aerospace and Defense, Life Sciences, and other highly regulated industries where members securely collaborate, share information, and operate compliantly. Within these communities we build trust. By analyzing community data, we provide insights and intelligence, enabling organizations to make better, timelier decisions, to mitigate risk, and operate more efficiently.

• We believe in employee development: we promote internally and provide training and educational assistance
• We provide a fun, engaged workplace, with social and community-building events
• We offer comprehensive benefits and flexible time off plans.

Exostar is an Equal Opportunity Employment Employer. The company provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, disability status or genetic information. Exostar is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all persons in all facets of employment including recruiting, hiring, compensation, promotion, training, benefits, transfers and working conditions.

Equal Opportunity Employer
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