Lead Designer

Job description

Lead Designer Position Details Location: Los Angeles (Hawthorne), CA Employment Type: Full-time Department: Design / Starlight Solar Travel: Occasional About Starpath Starpath develops and manufactures the technologies that will enable humans to live on the Moon and Mars. Today, we are building robotic systems that locally produce the essential commodities a lunar civilization will require at extreme scale: water, power, and oxygen. Our ultimate goal is to build and operate a self-sustaining city on Mars. The Role Starpath is building a growing portfolio of hardware — space solar arrays, lunar surface robotics, factory equipment, and the systems that will one day operate on the Moon and Mars. As our Lead Designer, you will own how our hardware looks, feels, and reads as a coherent family of products. Your work will define Starpath's design language, and set the aesthetic and formal standards that carry across every product we build. This is a hands-on senior IC role. You'll live in CAD, generate concepts, iterate fast, and partner deeply with engineering to translate design intent into buildable hardware. The right person combines strong industrial design instincts with the engineering fluency to work directly with mechanical, structures, and manufacturing teams without translation loss. Responsibilities - Develop and steward Starpath's industrial design language across all products — form, surfacing, proportions, materiality, and detail - Generate concept designs in CAD for new products and product refreshes, from early ideation through refined design intent - Partner with mechanical, structures, and manufacturing engineering to translate design concepts into buildable hardware while preserving design intent - Establish and evolve design standards, guidelines, and libraries that support consistency as the product portfolio grows - Lead design reviews and act as the design voice in cross-functional product decisions - Produce renderings, visualizations, and design deliverables that communicate design vision internally and externally (investor materials, customer presentations, marketing) - Own the visual and formal cohesion of Starpath's hardware — ensuring products from different teams read as part of the same family - Push back on unnecessary complexity — simplify forms, reduce visual noise, and cut detail wherever it doesn't add value Required Qualifications - Bachelor's or Master's degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, or a related discipline - 6+ years of industrial design experience with a portfolio demonstrating hardware product design, ideally in aerospace, robotics, consumer electronics, automotive, or comparable domains - Strong CAD proficiency (SolidWorks, Alias, Rhino, or similar) with the ability to model and iterate concepts directly - Demonstrated ability to define and maintain design language across a family of hardware products - Portfolio required for consideration Preferred Qualifications - Experience at a hardware company with a strong design reputation (Apple, Tesla, Rivian, Anduril, Nike, Frog Design, IDEO, or comparable) - Background bridging industrial design and mechanical engineering — comfort with GD&T, DFM, and engineering-driven design constraints - Proficiency with visualization and rendering tools (KeyShot, Blender, Cinema 4D, or similar) - Experience designing hardware for extreme environments, high-reliability applications, or complex mechanical systems - Sketching skills for early ideation and communication - Experience partnering with brand and marketing teams on visual identity and product photography - Prior experience as the sole designer or first design hire at a growing hardware company Compensation & Benefits - Location: Los Angeles (Hawthorne), CA - Competitive salary plus equity package; compensation scales with candidate experience - PTO & health/dental/vision coverage included EAR REQUIREMENTS: - To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Equal Opportunity Starpath is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.