New York, USA
Head of furniture design
at Branch
Branch is hiring a head of furniture design to join its team in New York City, USA or remotely.
About Branch
Branch is shaking up the $46B office furniture industry to create an office experience for the 21st century: easy, affordable and flexible so you can sit down (or stand) and get to work.
We’re based in NYC and backed by the investors behind household brands like Quip, Caraway and Peloton. Our founders arrive with experience in partnerships, real estate acquisitions and venture building at leading real estate companies like Oxford Properties, SL Green and Redfin.
We’re an ambitious group of problem solvers innovating across software, design and logistics, and we’re looking for entrepreneurial teammates who like a challenge.
The role
We are looking for a head of furniture design to grow our product portfolio with the highest level of user experience and delight. You’ll lead the design of beautiful, functional and accessible office products for both our enterprise and consumer business lines.
The ideal candidate will define the physical product development process at Branch from the ground up, from market research and assortment strategy to concept development, prototyping, user testing, production, launch and continuous improvement.
In your first ninety days at Branch, you’ll review our current product roadmap and refine our assortment strategy to find the highest leverage design opportunities, assess our existing product portfolio and prioritize opportunities for improvement, take ownership of design projects currently in flight, and begin work on new designs. You’ll collaborate deeply with our operations, creative and growth teams to refine our design language, build a culture of user-centric design and inform design-focused solutions across the company.
You combine technical and industrial design experience (sketches, renders, 3D modeling) and a rigorous, user-centric process with a deeply honed instinct for distinctive aesthetic design. You’re adept at technical communication of design concepts (sketches, renders, CAD) and collaborating with a wide variety of stakeholders, from production and manufacturing partners to other teams at Branch.
This is an incredible opportunity to lead a category-defining design practice at a well funded and rapidly-growing startup with ambitions to become a household brand in 2022 and beyond. If you’re truly passionate about exceptional design and want to improve the objects we interact with for eight plus hours a day, we’d love to meet you.
Day to day:
- own design of exceptional office products, from market and product research and competitive analysis through timeline development, design, prototyping and launch
- collaborate with growth and sales teams to understand market trends and opportunity size, conduct demand analyses, prioritize new product opportunities, define assortment strategy and own our physical product roadmap
- develop a unified design language within and across product categories, including color, materials, finishes and functionality
- lead concepting for new products, including creation of CAD renderings, product specifications and technical drawings using tools like SolidWorks, Keyshot and Rhino
- liaise with product development partners to execute on design vision and direction, from ideation to product launch
- partner with operations and customer experience teams to collect customer feedback and drive continuous improvements of existing products that enhance quality and optimize costs
- contribute to brand and design decisions beyond our physical product line, including packaging, retail design and visual design
What we’re looking for:
- at least five to seven years’ of experience at an industrial design studio or design-led product company, ideally in the furniture space, across both residential and consumer use cases
- strong portfolio highlighting your experience shipping exceptional products that users love
- superlative attention to every detail of a product including material, finish, weight and user experience
- passion for defining process, design systems and clear documentation: you make genius repeatable
- knowledge of material manufacturing and specifications, and functional use of materials in furniture applications
- experience with product standardized testing requirements
- experience with assortment planning and owning a product roadmap
- proficiency with concept development through sketches, renders and via modeling tools such as SolidWorks, Rhino, Keyshot, Alias, Onshape and Fusion 360 and Adobe Creative Suite
- strong bias for action and a thirst to learn
- exceptional written and verbal communication