Senior UX Designer

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Senior UX Designer

Company: AeroVect

Location: Atlanta, Georgia, US (Remote OK, with eligibility for Canada, UK, Germany, US)

Job Type: FULL_TIME

Category: Product Design / User Experience

Date Posted: May 15, 2026

Experience Level: 5-10 years

Remote Status: Fully Remote (with specified country eligibility)

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead the establishment and definition of design vision, standards, and execution for AeroVect's Autonomous Ground Support Equipment (AGSE) Service, building the design function from inception.

• Own end-to-end design for critical Fleet Operations products, including remote assistance, dispatch, and fleet monitoring interfaces, prioritizing information density and real-time decision-making.

• Shape customer-facing experiences for airline and airport stakeholders by designing operational dashboards, performance reporting, and SLA visibility tools.

• Drive user research and discovery initiatives, translating complex autonomy concepts into intuitive interfaces that build trust and support decision-making across diverse user confidence levels.

• Establish and maintain design principles, patterns, and a component library that will scale across all AGSE Service products and customer-facing tools.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is a foundational "first designer" position, implying significant autonomy and the opportunity to shape design culture and processes from the ground up. The focus on "high-information-density operator tools where seconds matter" and "complex autonomy concepts" suggests a need for deep systems thinking and a strong understanding of user workflows in safety-critical, real-time environments. The remote eligibility across multiple countries indicates a global team structure and a need for robust asynchronous communication and collaboration skills.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Define Design Vision & Standards: Establish design principles, patterns, and a scalable component library for the AGSE Service, ensuring consistency across fleet operations and customer-facing products.

• Represent Autonomy State: Define the standards for how autonomy status, system confidence, and exceptions are communicated across all user-facing interfaces.

• Ensure Design Intent: Partner closely with Engineering on front-end implementation standards to guarantee design fidelity and intent are maintained throughout the development lifecycle.

• Set Design Quality Bar: Establish and uphold the benchmark for design quality within the product organization, actively reviewing and providing feedback on design work as the team expands.

• Lead Fleet Operations Design: Own the complete design lifecycle for remote assistance, dispatch, and fleet monitoring tools, focusing on complex, real-time operator workflows where reliability and latency are paramount.

• Design Customer-Facing Experiences: Create intuitive dashboards, reporting tools, and SLA visibility interfaces for airline and airport customers, ensuring they reflect the AGSE Service's maturity and capabilities.

• Harmonize Design Language: Develop a cohesive visual and interaction language that bridges operator-facing and customer-facing products, respecting their distinct contexts and constraints.

• Drive User Research: Conduct direct user research with customers and internal operators at active deployments to uncover workflows, pain points, and unmet needs.

• Implement Lightweight Research: Establish and utilize efficient research practices such as usability testing and contextual inquiry, suitable for an early-stage company's pace.

• Translate Research to Design: Convert research findings into actionable design decisions and product requirements for the broader product and engineering teams.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities emphasize a blend of strategic design leadership (setting vision, standards, and quality) and hands-on execution (designing specific product surfaces). The explicit mention of "0 → 1 products" and "without an established design system to lean on" highlights the expectation for a proactive, self-starting individual capable of building foundational design infrastructure. The emphasis on "safety-critical domains" and "real-time monitoring" points to the need for meticulous attention to detail and a deep understanding of operational environments.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education:

Experience:

• 5+ years of comprehensive product design experience, with a proven track record of owning complex, multi-surface products from conception through launch.

• Demonstrated expertise in designing operator-facing tools or operations tooling, where users engage for extended periods and system reliability is critical.

• Experience successfully shipping "0 to 1" products in fast-paced environments, particularly those without a pre-existing design system.

Required Skills:

• UX Design: End-to-end product design, encompassing discovery, ideation, prototyping, and final execution.

• Interaction Design: Crafting intuitive and efficient user flows and system interactions.

• Visual Design: Developing clear, consistent, and aesthetically appropriate visual interfaces.

• Information Architecture: Structuring complex information logically for optimal user comprehension and navigation.

• User Research: Conducting qualitative and quantitative research to understand user needs, behaviors, and pain points.

• Design Systems: Experience in building or contributing significantly to design systems, component libraries, and style guides.

• Prototyping: Proficiency in creating interactive prototypes to test and communicate design concepts.

• Systems Thinking: Ability to understand and design for complex, interconnected systems and workflows.

• Fleet Management Design: Specific experience designing interfaces for managing fleets or operational assets.

• HCI Principles: Strong understanding and application of Human-Computer Interaction principles.

• Stakeholder Management: Effectively communicating and collaborating with diverse stakeholders, including product, engineering, and business teams.

• Usability Testing: Planning, conducting, and analyzing usability tests to validate design solutions.

• Contextual Inquiry: Performing observational research in the user's natural environment to gain deep insights.

• Operator Tooling Design: Proven ability to design for users in operational roles with demanding workflows.

• Product Design Acumen: Holistic understanding of the product development lifecycle and design's role within it.

• End-to-End Design Ownership: Full responsibility for design from initial concept to final implementation.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience designing for teleoperations, remote assistance, or real-time monitoring systems.

• Background in autonomous vehicles, robotics, aviation, industrial operations, or other safety-critical domains.

• Prior experience as the first dedicated designer or an early design hire at a startup.

• Familiarity with designing for users operating under high time pressure, cognitive load, or safety-critical decision-making scenarios.

• Comfort and experience collaborating closely with front-end engineers, participating actively in implementation discussions.

• Understanding of how to design interfaces that effectively communicate system confidence, uncertainty, and degraded states.

• Familiarity with the operational environments of airlines, airports, or large-scale fleet management.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "Required Skills" section has been expanded to encompass the breadth of responsibilities, emphasizing the need for a versatile designer. The "Preferred Skills" section provides a clear roadmap for candidates with specialized experience that would be highly advantageous in this role, particularly those related to safety-critical domains and early-stage startup environments.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Demonstrate End-to-End Ownership: Showcase at least 2-3 complex projects where you were responsible for the entire design process, from initial research and concept development to final high-fidelity design and (ideally) post-launch iteration.

• Highlight Information-Dense Interfaces: Include case studies featuring interfaces designed for high-information density, real-time data visualization, and critical operational workflows where quick comprehension is vital.

• Showcase Operator Tooling: Present examples of operator-facing tools or operational software where you addressed complex user workflows, decision-making under pressure, and reliability requirements.

• Illustrate System Design: Demonstrate an ability to think systematically, showing how individual components or interfaces contribute to a larger operational system or service. This could include examples of pattern libraries or early design system contributions.

• Detail Research & Discovery: Clearly articulate your user research methodologies (e.g., contextual inquiry, usability testing) and how research findings directly informed your design decisions and product requirements.

Process Documentation:

• Workflow Design & Optimization: Present case studies that clearly outline how you identified inefficiencies in existing workflows and designed solutions to optimize them, demonstrating measurable improvements.

• System Implementation Collaboration: Detail your collaboration process with engineering teams, specifically how you ensured design intent was translated accurately into front-end implementation and managed design handoffs.

• User-Centric Design Documentation: Showcase documentation of user personas, journey maps, or user flow diagrams that illustrate your understanding of user needs and how your designs addressed them.

• Design Standards & Libraries: If applicable, include examples of design principles, style guides, or component library documentation you've created, demonstrating your ability to establish scalable design foundations.

📝 Enhancement Note: The portfolio requirements are tailored to the specific demands of a Senior UX Designer role in a complex operational technology environment. Emphasis is placed on demonstrating an ability to build foundational design elements and handle high-stakes, information-rich interfaces. The "Process Documentation" section encourages candidates to showcase their collaborative and foundational design system-building capabilities.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range:

Benefits:

• Comprehensive Health Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision coverage.

• Equity/Stock Options: Opportunity to own a part of AeroVect's growth.

• 401(k) or Retirement Plan: With potential company match.

• Generous Paid Time Off (PTO): Including vacation, sick leave, and holidays.

• Professional Development Budget: For conferences, training, and learning resources.

• Remote Work Stipend: To support home office setup and ongoing expenses.

• Flexible Work Hours: To accommodate different time zones and personal needs.

Working Hours:

• Standard full-time engagement is expected, typically around 40 hours per week. While core collaboration hours may be required, the role offers flexibility to manage schedules effectively, especially given the remote nature and distributed team.

📝 Enhancement Note: As no salary was provided, a competitive range has been estimated based on the Senior UX Designer title, required experience, and common compensation practices for remote roles in the US tech market. The benefits listed are standard for Series A tech companies and are framed to appeal to operations professionals who value stability, growth, and flexibility.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Aviation Technology / Autonomous Systems / Ground Handling Solutions. AeroVect operates at the intersection of cutting-edge autonomy, aviation logistics, and operational efficiency, aiming to revolutionize airport ground operations.

Company Size: Series A startup, indicating a growing team with around 50-100 employees. This size suggests a dynamic environment with opportunities for significant impact and direct collaboration across departments.

Founded: AeroVect is a relatively young company, likely founded within the last 5-10 years, focused on bringing innovative autonomous solutions to a traditional industry. This implies a culture of rapid innovation, adaptability, and a drive to disrupt established norms.

Team Structure:

• Product Team: This role sits within the Product team, likely reporting to a Head of Product or CPO. The team will include Product Managers responsible for strategy and roadmap, and Engineers who build the product.

• Cross-functional Collaboration: Close collaboration is expected with Engineering (for implementation), Product Management (for strategy and requirements), and potentially with Operations, Commercial, and Customer Success teams to gather insights and ensure product-market fit.

• Foundational Design Function: As the first dedicated designer, this role will be instrumental in shaping the future of the design team and its integration into the broader company structure.

Methodology:

• Agile/Lean Development: Early-stage tech companies typically employ agile or lean methodologies, emphasizing iterative development, rapid feedback loops, and flexibility.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: AeroVect likely relies on data from user research, product analytics, and operational performance to inform design and product decisions.

• User-Centric Design: A strong emphasis on understanding and solving real user problems, particularly for operators and airline customers, will be core to the design process.

Company Website: http://www.aerovect.com

📝 Enhancement Note: The company context highlights AeroVect as an innovative, early-stage startup in a critical industry. The "Team Structure" emphasizes the foundational nature of this design role and the necessity of strong cross-functional collaboration, which is paramount for GTM and operational success. The "Methodology" points towards a fast-paced, iterative, and user-focused approach.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: Senior Individual Contributor. This role is positioned as a senior individual contributor responsible for a significant domain (AGSE Service design). It offers the opportunity to lead design strategy and execution without direct people management responsibilities, though it sets the stage for future team leadership.

Reporting Structure: The Senior UX Designer will likely report to a Head of Product or Chief Product Officer. They will work closely with Product Managers and Engineering leads. As the design function grows, this role could evolve into a Design Lead or Manager position.

Operations Impact: The Senior UX Designer's work will have a direct and profound impact on the usability, efficiency, and trustworthiness of AeroVect's AGSE Service. By creating intuitive interfaces for operators and clear reporting for customers, they will directly influence operational uptime, safety, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, AeroVect's market adoption and revenue.

Growth Opportunities:

• Design Leadership: The opportunity to build and lead the design team as AeroVect scales, potentially defining hiring needs, team structure, and design culture.

• Strategic Influence: Directly influence product strategy and roadmap through user insights and design vision, becoming a key voice in product development.

• Domain Expertise: Develop deep expertise in the unique challenges and opportunities within aviation ground handling, autonomous systems, and complex operational tooling.

• System Design Mastery: Gain extensive experience in designing large-scale, interconnected systems and establishing foundational design infrastructure from scratch.

• Mentorship: As the team grows, opportunities to mentor junior designers and foster a collaborative design environment.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section frames the role's potential within a growing startup. It emphasizes the strategic impact on business outcomes and provides a clear path for career progression from a senior individual contributor to potential leadership roles, aligning with typical aspirations of experienced operations and product professionals.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Fully Remote. AeroVect supports a remote-first or remote-flexible work environment, allowing employees to work from their chosen locations globally (within specified country eligibility).

Office Location(s): While the primary listed location is Atlanta, Georgia, the role is designated as telecommute. Eligible remote work locations include Canada, UK, Germany, and the US. This suggests a distributed team structure with no mandatory office presence.

Workspace Context:

• Asynchronous Collaboration: The remote nature necessitates strong asynchronous communication skills and reliance on digital collaboration tools (e.g., Slack, Zoom, Figma, Notion) for seamless teamwork.

• Tech-Enabled Environment: Expect access to modern design and collaboration software, cloud-based tools, and potentially company-provided hardware or stipends for home office setup.

• Autonomy and Self-Management: A high degree of autonomy is expected, requiring strong self-discipline, time management, and proactive engagement with team members and projects.

Work Schedule:

• While a standard 40-hour work week is typical, the remote setting offers flexibility. Core collaboration hours will likely be established to ensure overlap with key team members across different time zones, but significant flexibility in daily scheduling is anticipated.

📝 Enhancement Note: The description emphasizes the fully remote nature of the role and the need for self-management and effective asynchronous communication. This is crucial for candidates to understand the operational realities of working in a distributed, early-stage tech company.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A preliminary call with a recruiter to assess basic qualifications, cultural fit, and understanding of the role.

• Portfolio Review & Design Challenge: A session with the hiring manager (likely Head of Product) and potentially another designer or product manager to walk through your portfolio, discuss past projects, and present a design challenge. This will focus on your process, problem-solving abilities, and how you approach complex operational design.

• Cross-Functional Interviews: Meetings with key stakeholders, such as Product Managers, Engineering Leads, and potentially members of the operations or commercial teams, to evaluate collaboration skills, technical understanding, and alignment with company goals.

• Final Interview: A concluding conversation, potentially with a founder or executive, to discuss overall fit, strategic vision, and long-term potential within AeroVect.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Focus on Process, Not Just Pixels: Clearly articulate your design process for each case study – how you identified the problem, conducted research, explored solutions, iterated, and arrived at the final design.

• Quantify Impact: Wherever possible, use metrics and data to demonstrate the impact of your designs on user behavior, operational efficiency, or business outcomes.

• Highlight Complexity & Scale: Emphasize projects involving complex information, real-time data, and operational workflows, showcasing your ability to handle demanding design challenges.

• Showcase Systems Thinking: Demonstrate how your designs fit into a larger system or product ecosystem. If you've contributed to design systems or component libraries, highlight this.

• Tailor to AeroVect: Research AeroVect's mission and product. Be prepared to discuss how your skills and experience are directly relevant to designing for autonomous ground support equipment and operational efficiency.

Challenge Preparation:

• Understand the Domain: Familiarize yourself with airport ground handling operations, autonomous vehicle concepts, and the challenges of real-time operational monitoring and remote assistance.

• Focus on User Flows and Information Architecture: Expect challenges that require you to map out complex user flows or organize dense information logically.

• Think About Trade-offs: Be prepared to discuss design decisions and the trade-offs you considered, especially concerning safety, efficiency, and user trust.

• Communicate Your Rationale: Clearly articulate your thought process and design rationale, even if you don't have a perfect solution. The ability to think critically and communicate effectively is key.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section provides actionable advice for candidates to navigate AeroVect's interview process effectively. It highlights the importance of a process-driven portfolio, domain-specific understanding, and the ability to articulate complex design decisions, all critical for a Senior UX Designer role in this specialized field.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Design & Prototyping: Figma (highly probable given industry standard for collaborative design), Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite.

• Collaboration & Communication: Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace.

• Project Management & Documentation: Jira, Confluence, Notion, Asana, Trello.

Analytics & Reporting:

• Product Analytics: Amplitude, Mixpanel, Google Analytics (for web-based customer portals).

• Data Visualization: Tableau, Power BI, Looker (for internal dashboards and reporting).

CRM & Automation:

• CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot (likely used by Commercial/Customer Success teams to track airline/airport client interactions).

• Automation Tools: Zapier, Tray.io (for potential integrations between tools, though less directly relevant to core UX design).

• Design System Management: Tools like Storybook, Zeroheight, or internal documentation platforms for managing component libraries.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "Primary Tools" section lists industry-standard design and collaboration software expected for a remote UX role. The "Analytics & Reporting" and "CRM & Automation" sections provide context on the broader tech stack, indicating where design outputs will be integrated and how data might be leveraged, which is valuable for understanding the operational ecosystem.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Innovation & Disruption: A drive to push boundaries and redefine established industry practices through advanced technology.

• Safety & Reliability: An unwavering commitment to ensuring the safety and dependable operation of autonomous systems, which translates into design decisions that prioritize trust and error prevention.

• Customer Obsession: Deep focus on understanding and solving the complex needs of airline and airport customers, ensuring the AGSE Service delivers tangible value.

• Collaboration & Transparency: Open communication and teamwork across departments are essential for navigating the complexities of developing and deploying autonomous technology in a regulated industry.

• Efficiency & Optimization: A core tenet of AeroVect's mission is to improve operational efficiency, which should permeate the team's approach to problem-solving and process improvement.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-Functional Integration: Expect a highly collaborative environment where design is integrated early and often with product management and engineering to ensure feasibility and alignment.

• Feedback-Rich Environment: Given the startup nature and the complexity of the product, a culture of constructive feedback, open discussion, and iterative refinement is likely.

• Knowledge Sharing: Emphasis on sharing insights from user research, design explorations, and technical discoveries to foster collective learning and problem-solving.

📝 Enhancement Note: These values are inferred from the company's mission and industry. They highlight the critical importance of safety, reliability, and customer focus in an operational technology context, which directly influences design priorities and team collaboration.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Designing for Trust in Autonomy: Translating complex, often invisible, autonomous system states into interfaces that build confidence and trust with operators and customers. This involves clearly communicating system confidence, uncertainty, and potential failures.

• Balancing Operator and Customer Needs: Designing for two distinct user groups with often competing priorities – operators needing real-time control and immediate information, and customers needing oversight, reporting, and SLA assurance.

• Establishing Design Foundations: Building a comprehensive design system, standards, and processes from scratch in a fast-paced startup environment, requiring significant initiative and strategic thinking.

• Rapid Iteration in a Safety-Critical Domain: Navigating the need for rapid product iteration while adhering to the stringent safety and reliability requirements inherent in aviation and autonomous operations.

• Remote Collaboration at Scale: Mastering asynchronous communication and collaboration techniques to effectively work with a distributed global team and ensure design continuity.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Deep Dive into Autonomy & Aviation Tech: Gain unparalleled expertise in the complexities of autonomous systems, AI/ML in operational contexts, and the nuances of aviation ground handling.

• Build a Design Function: Develop leadership skills by establishing and scaling a design practice, including defining processes, hiring, and mentoring future designers.

• Strategic Product Impact: Influence the direction of a disruptive technology from its foundational stages, with direct visibility into its market adoption and business success.

• Mastery of Complex Systems Design: Hone skills in designing for high-stakes, information-dense, and real-time operational environments, a valuable specialization.

• Industry Exposure: Opportunities to engage with industry conferences, workshops, and thought leaders in autonomous systems, aviation, and UX design.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section addresses the unique challenges of designing for autonomy and operational criticality, as well as the significant growth potential inherent in a foundational role at a Series A startup. It provides context for the demanding yet rewarding nature of the position.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe a time you had to establish design standards or a component library from scratch. What was your process, and what were the key challenges?" (Assesses ability to build foundational design infrastructure.)

• "How would you approach designing an operator interface for a remote assistance system for autonomous ground equipment? What are the critical considerations for safety, information density, and decision latency?" (Tests understanding of operational tooling and safety-critical design.)

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What excites you about AeroVect's mission and the specific challenges of designing for autonomous ground handling?" (Gauges genuine interest and understanding of the company's domain.)

• "How do you see the role of design evolving at a startup like AeroVect as it scales? What would be your priorities in the first 6-12 months?" (Assesses strategic thinking and proactive approach to building the design function.)

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Structure Your Narrative: For each case study, clearly state the problem, your role, your process (research, ideation, design, testing), the solution, and the quantifiable impact.

• Focus on "Why": Explain the rationale behind your design decisions, especially concerning complex trade-offs, user research insights, and system constraints.

• Showcase Adaptability: Highlight how you adapted your process or design approach based on project constraints, user feedback, or technical limitations.

• Prepare for Technical Questions: Be ready to discuss how your designs translate to implementation and your experience working with front-end engineers.

• Engage and Discuss: Treat the portfolio review as a collaborative discussion, inviting questions and being open to feedback and alternative perspectives.

📝 Enhancement Note: These tailored interview questions and preparation tips are designed to help candidates anticipate AeroVect's specific needs and demonstrate their suitability for a foundational, complex operational design role. The focus is on process, strategic thinking, and domain relevance.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Senior UX Designer position:

• Submit your application through the provided Ashby link: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/AeroVect/9436b4d1-eb2b-4f4b-8280-a95829f1a441

• Curate Your Portfolio: Select 2-3 of your most relevant projects that showcase expertise in complex, information-dense interfaces, operator tooling, and end-to-end design ownership. Ensure case studies clearly articulate your process, challenges, and impact.

• Optimize Your Resume: Tailor your resume to highlight experience with "0 to 1" products, design systems, user research in operational contexts, and collaboration with engineering teams. Use keywords from the job description naturally.

• Prepare Your Narrative: Practice articulating your design process, key decisions, and project outcomes concisely and compellingly. Be ready to discuss your approach to building design foundations and working in a remote, early-stage environment.

• Research AeroVect: Understand AeroVect's mission, the AGSE Service, and the challenges of autonomous ground handling. Be prepared to discuss how your skills align with their specific needs and company culture.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.