Sr. Manager Product Designer
ArcherArcher is an aerospace company based in San Jose, California building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft with a mission to advance the benefits of sustainable air mobility. We are designing, manufacturing, and operating an all-electric aircraft that can carry four passengers while producing minimal noise.
Our sights are set high and our problems are hard, and we believe that diversity in the workplace is what makes us smarter, drives better insights, and will ultimately lift us all to success. We are dedicated to cultivating an equitable and inclusive environment that embraces our differences, and supports and celebrates all of our team members.
We are seeking a highly skilled Staff Product Designer to join our AI Product Development team, to build out a design system to support all digital design interfaces across mobile and desktop, internal and external facing. You will play a critical role in designing innovative features and products, ranging from internal proof-of-concept demos to customer-facing SaaS solutions for airline industry customers. Your work will shape intuitive, impactful, and scalable user experiences that align with our mission to deliver cutting-edge AI-driven solutions.
The top priority is to keep the state of designs at least a sprint ahead of front-end developers, when possible, and supporting them through engineering implementation of those designs to ensure ease and accuracy of development, as well as address unforeseen edge-cases that often arise.
What You'll Do:
- Manage UX projects. Collaborate with AI engineers, front-end engineers, designers, product managers, and key stakeholders to design user-centric features and tools for internal teams and external customers. These include but are not limited to: AI Suite of Tools, Airline Ops Planner, Internal Tools Component Library, and managing Archer.com website redesign / rebuild, SF Heli website and possibly other future marketing web pages if needed.
- Translate complex requirements and AI concepts into intuitive user flows with polished, on-brand interfaces.
- Create wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity design specs to support rapid engineering iteration and validation of proof-of-concept demos.
- Develop and maintain the Archer design systems for mobile, desktop and web components, to ensure consistency across products and features, enabling tighter iteration cycles and faster implementation time for Engineering.
- Collaborate with Product Managers to refine PRD’s, shaping product strategy, conduct user research and define usability testing targets to validate designs and incorporate feedback. Stay updated on airline industry trends, user needs, and share these learnings with the team to inform and justify design decisions.
- Partner with Front End Developers to communicate design intention, understand technical limitations, and ensure seamless implementation of designs.maintaining quality and functionality. Work closely with QA Manager to ensure visual UI quality and UX accuracy is being met across all browsers and devices as necessary.
- Manage UX team, and participate in prospective candidate interview processes, contribute to hiring decisions, and mentor UX designers to collectively up-level the quality and speed of the work output from our team.
- Conduct design crits (scheduled and/or on-demand as-needed) with design leadership, to ensure up-to-date brand direction and explore new opportunities to push feature concepts to the next level – in parallel, conduct weekly design reviews with Eng and Product stakeholders, to present design direction and explain decisions agreed upon with Design Leads.
What You Need:
- 15+ years of product design experience, with 7+ years in a senior or staff-level role.
- Bachelor’s degree in Product Design, HCI, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- Proven track record designing SaaS products and complex technical interfaces, ideally for enterprise customers.
- Proficiency in design tools (e.g., Figma, Adobe, etc.) and producing high fidelity, on-device prototypes.
- Experience collaborating with engineering teams, particularly in AI or data-driven environments.
- Strong understanding of user research, interaction design, and information architecture.
- Familiarity with AI products and technologies and airline industry or enterprise SaaS is a plus.
- Excellent communication skills to articulate design decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to simplify complex AI functionalities into user-friendly designs.
- Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
- Proactive, adaptable, comfortable and cooperative in working in a fast-paced, iterative environment.
- Passion for mentoring and fostering a collaborative team culture.
Please note that this job description is intended to provide a general overview of the position and does not include an exhaustive list of responsibilities and qualifications.
At Archer we aim to attract, retain, and motivate talent that possess the skills and leadership necessary to grow our business. We drive a pay-for-performance culture and reward performance that supports the Company’s business strategy. For this position we are targeting a base pay between $186,240 - $232,800. Actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
Archer is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to job applicants with physical or mental disabilities, and those with sincerely held religious beliefs. Applicants who may require reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process should provide their name and contact information to Archer’s People Team at people@archer.com. Reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case-by-case basis.