Staff Industrial Designer

Heron Power; Scotts Valley (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Heron Power Electronics is seeking a Staff Industrial Designer to shape products, experiences, and visual language across power electronics offerings. The role centers on industrial design while spanning product UX, visuals, and brand.

You will work with design leadership and engineers to move concepts from exploration to production, setting a high standard for craft and coherence across the product family.

Qualifications

• Significant professional experience designing and shipping physical products with strong industrial design thinking.
• Strong fundamentals in form development, proportion, product architecture, CMF, ergonomics, and detailing.
• 3D skills with CAD, rendering, prototyping, and physical models.
• Experience collaborating with engineering teams under technical, cost, and schedule constraints.
• Ability to frame ambiguous problems, articulate design rationale, and drive work forward.

Responsibilities

• Drive industrial design efforts across Heron's power electronics products from concept through production.
• Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, thermal, manufacturing, and software teams to translate constraints into design solutions.
• Explore architecture, proportion, materials, finishes, interfaces, serviceability, and manufacturing details.
• Create sketches, CAD models, prototypes, renderings, and diagrams to communicate concepts.
• Define how users physically interact with products, including installation, operation, and safety.
• Develop visual communication for complex ideas through diagrams and product graphics.
• Evolve Heron's visual identity across products, spaces, and communications.
• Establish design systems and patterns for a growing product family.
• Advocate for user needs while balancing engineering performance and cost.

Skills

Industrial design

Form development

CMF

Ergonomics

3D CAD

Prototyping

Visual communication

Brand systems

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Tools

CAD software

Rendering tools

Job description

What to Expect

Heron Power Electronics is a company building cutting-edge power electronics products for the 21st-century grid. We aim to debottleneck the growth of electricity generation and consumption with scalable, innovative, and less costly hardware solutions, accelerating the sustainable electrification of everything.

Our first goal is to build better converters to connect large-scale renewables, storage, and loads like datacenters to the grid. Heron Power's leadership team is made up of seasoned veterans who have designed and shipped gigawatts of power conversion products.

We believe great design is an important part of building great technology. Our products are physical machines, digital interfaces, tools, environments, documentation, and a brand—and the experience of Heron is shaped by all of them.

We understand that no one individual knows everything. We learn together, build together, and solve difficult problems from first principles. You can expect to work in a fast-moving, deeply technical environment where designers work directly with engineers, operators, customers, and leadership to turn complex technology into products and experiences that are clear, useful, thoughtful, and distinctly Heron.

Job Overview

We are looking for a Staff Industrial Designer to help shape the products, experiences, and visual language of Heron Power Electronics.

This is a broad design role with industrial design at its center, spanning physical product design, product UX, visual communication, and brand. You might spend one project developing the form, architecture, interfaces, and details of a new power electronics product; another improving how an operator interacts with a product; and another creating the creating graphics, infographics, environmental elements, or documentation that make complex ideas clear.

You will work closely with the Head of Design and leadership across mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, manufacturing, software, commercial, and more. You'll move fluidly between defining a problem, exploring concepts, prototyping solutions, developing production-ready designs, and working with partners to bring them into the world.

As a Staff-level designer, you will be expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy, take ownership of ambiguous design problems, establish a strong point of view, move quickly from thinking to making, and help raise the quality and coherence of design across Heron.

How You Will Contribute

• Drive industrial design efforts across Heron's power electronics products, from early architecture and concept development through detailed design and production.

• Work directly with mechanical, electrical, thermal, manufacturing, and systems engineers to understand technical constraints and turn them into thoughtful product solutions.

• Explore product architecture, proportion, form, materials, finishes, interfaces, serviceability, manufacturing processes, and details.

• Build quickly and think through making—using sketches, CAD, physical prototypes, renderings, mockups, animations, and whatever tools best address the question at hand.

• Help define how people physically interact with Heron products, including installation, operation, service, access, controls, labeling, status communication, and safety.

• Contribute to digital product UX where physical and digital experiences intersect, working with software teams to make complex systems understandable and intuitive.

• Develop clear visual communication for complex technical ideas through diagrams, information graphics, presentations, product graphics, documentation, and other storytelling tools.

• Extend and evolve Heron's visual identity across products, spaces, digital experiences, events, and communications.

• Establish design systems, principles, and patterns that create consistency across an expanding family of Heron products and touchpoints.

• Advocate for the user while balancing engineering performance, manufacturing, cost, reliability, safety, serviceability, and business requirements.

• Raise the design bar across the company through strong craft, thoughtful critique, clear communication, and a willingness to get into the details and go the extra mile.

What You Will Bring

We're looking for an Industrial Designer with deep industrial design capability and unusually broad range.

You do not need to be equally specialized in every design discipline. We care more about excellent design judgment, strong execution, curiosity, and the ability to move confidently across different kinds of problems.

Must-Have Requirements

• Significant professional experience designing and shipping physical products, with a portfolio demonstrating exceptional industrial design thinking and craft, strong taste, breadth across disciplines, and the ability to carry ideas from early exploration through polished execution.

• Strong industrial design fundamentals, including form development, proportion, product architecture, CMF, ergonomics, manufacturing processes, and design detailing.

• Strong 3D skills and experience developing concepts through CAD, rendering, prototyping, and physical models.

• Heart. We are rebuilding the American grid. Solving extremely difficult and urgent problems. Laying the foundation for highly intelligent power infrastructure that can enable abundant, efficient, sustainable energy. This is a BFD. It should move you.

• Experience collaborating closely with engineering teams and working within real technical, manufacturing, cost, and schedule constraints.

• Strong graphic and visual communication skills, including layout, composition, typography, information hierarchy, diagrams, and presentation design.

• Ability to take complex technical information and make it understandable through design.

• Experience thinking about products as complete experiences—not just objects—including physical interaction, interfaces, installation, service, communication, and environment.

• Ability to independently frame ambiguous problems, develop a point of view, communicate design rationale, and drive work forward with limited direction.

• Low ego, high curiosity, strong internal drive, and sincere enthusiasm for collaborating with people from disciplines very different from your own.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience designing industrial equipment, energy products, robotics, vehicles, electronics, or other technically complex physical products.

• Experience with UX or interaction design for hardware, embedded interfaces, tools, dashboards, or technical systems.

• Experience developing or evolving visual identities and applying brand systems across physical and digital touchpoints.

• Experience with product graphics, labeling, wayfinding, environmental graphics, or tradeshow/exhibition design.

• Experience working in a startup or other environment where designers need to do it all, big and small, and move comfortably between strategy and hands-on execution.

• An interest in electricity, energy systems, manufacturing, and the physical infrastructure that makes modern life possible.

If you're a designer who gets excited moving between the scale of a machine, an interface, a diagram, and a brand—and wants to do it side by side with exceptional engineers solving genuinely hard problems,we'd love to hear from you.