Design Director

Location

Remote, Los Angeles

Contract

Remote

Design

Reports to: Studio Co-Founders

Manages: 1 staff Sr. Designer, and 2-3 design contractors

Location: Remote (Los Angeles or SF Bay Area preferred)

Work Capacity: Full time (40 hours)

Term: 3 month contract to hire, with intention to increase commitment if there is a mutual fit

Compensation: base rate of $110 - 120/hour a salary equivalent of $165,000 - $175,000 annually

Priority review date: January 30th

Ideal start date: February 16th

The Design Director leads design work across Spherical's projects, with primary focus on the Living Infrastructure Field Kit. You work at the intersection of strategic design and regenerative principles, guiding participatory design processes that center community knowledge and create space for collaborative intelligence.

You are a hands‑on leader who partners with cross‑functional teams and specialist contractors to create intuitive, community‑centered experiences. You balance strategic vision with present needs, innovation with accessibility, and team development with project delivery. You see things through from conception to delivery.

We are invested in hiring candidates from diverse backgrounds and understand that not all candidates will meet every qualification listed. If you feel that you meet many of the qualifications, we encourage you to apply.

• Design experiences that are intuitive, meaningful, and honor diverse perspectives and cultural contexts
• Translate complex environmental and systems data into interfaces that make information visible and actionable for community advocacy
• Maintain and evolve the UI kit and design system with engineering, balancing consistency with flexibility for new platform needs
• Monitor and address design quality issues and visual inconsistencies across the platform
• Lead collaborative design processes that build collective intelligence and ownership
• Coordinate with specialist contractors across information design, data science, game design, and other disciplines
• Pursue craft with intention, attending to both functional and evocative details

• Lead the organization and synthesis insights from community workshops and stakeholder sessions
• Support participatory design processes that center community knowledge and lived experience
• Document and synthesize user insights, experience opportunities, and interface needs
• Test solutions to improve usability for different stakeholders
• Engage stakeholders as collaborators, embedding community knowledge and lived experience

• Present design strategy and progress to partners and community stakeholders
• Guide project planning within real‑world constraints and resource realities
• Measure design impact to ensure solutions support human and ecological wellbeing
• Define and track design success metrics
• Anticipate potential direct and indirect effects of collective design decisions to steer the work toward desired outcomes

• Provide functional direction, management, and expertise for your team
• Build a collaborative team culture aligned with studio values and regenerative design principles
• Support team members' growth in strategic thinking and leadership capacity
• Help shape and tend to studio culture through honest communication, engaged caring, and accountability
• Balance workload and coordinate across functions
• Manage hiring, staffing, and budgets for internal team and external contractors
• Define project scopes and manage consultant partnerships

• Lead design for the Living Infrastructure Field Kit as primary focus
• Contribute to Spherical Lab initiatives, including coding experiments, data visualizations, and immersive productions, as opportunities arise
• Bridge disciplinary perspectives across projects, integrating design with research, development, and production work

• User experiences that empower users through clarity, consistency, and progressive disclosure
• Community‑centered approaches that reflect diverse stakeholder input and address real needs
• Measurable improvements in participation, retention,…