Design Director

About the Position

We're seeking a Design Director to lead strategic design and regenerative principles at Spherical, focusing on the Living Infrastructure Field Kit.

Locations

• Los Angeles, CA (Remote)
• SF Bay Area (Remote)

Salary

• Annual salary range: $165,000 - $175,000

Employment Type

• Full-time

About this Role

The Design Director leads design work across Spherical's projects, with a 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.

Responsibilities

• Experience & Interaction Design

  • Design intuitive, meaningful experiences that 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
  • Lead collaborative design processes that build collective intelligence and ownership
  • Coordinate with specialist contractors across various disciplines

• Design Research

  • Lead the organization and synthesis of 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

• Design Strategy & Planning

  • 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

• Team Development & Culture

  • 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

Requirements

• 7+ years leading UX, product, and/or experience design work in complex systems
• 3+ years leading with demonstrated organization-level strategic thinking and team development capacity
• Experience with participatory design methods and cross-functional collaboration
• Experience designing interfaces for environmental or spatial data products used in advocacy, civic engagement, or community decision-making
• Experience creating accessible interfaces that serve diverse human abilities and contexts
• Experience managing external contractors and translating specialized content into interface design
• Strong project management skills
• Healthy balance of curiosity and discernment in the use of new AI-connected tools

Nice to Have

• Track record of navigating ambiguity and designing for long-term change in complex environments
• Experience in game design, speculative futures, or narrative world-building
• Experience bridging multiple disciplines and ways of knowing
• Familiarity with living systems thinking or regenerative design principles

How to Apply

Please include a portfolio link highlighting complex interface work, your role on multi-disciplinary collaborations, and artifacts that demonstrate process and outcomes.

Skills

• UX
• Product design
• Experience design
• Participatory design
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Interface design
• Environmental data
• Spatial data
• Advocacy
• Civic engagement
• Community decision-making
• Accessible interfaces
• Client relationships
• Project management
• AI-connected tools

About the Company

Spherical is a strategic design and integrative research studio working to regenerate the health and integrity of Earth's living systems. Our work spans multiple spheres of inquiry, engaging projects at scales from the local to the planetary. We work with people who willingly engage complexity and who bring care and attention to collaboration. Our anchor project is the Living Infrastructure Field Kit, a mapping and co-design platform reimagining how infrastructure is conceived in Los Angeles County, starting with communities. We also explore living systems through coding experiments, ecological data visualizations, immersive productions, and site-specific performances.

Learn more about working at Spherical →