Senior Product Designer

Perimeter is searching for its first product designer to create simple, yet delightful, experiences for first responders and people affected by wildfires. By gaining and leveraging a deep understanding of our users, you will both shape products and influence strategy to revolve around their needs. For Perimeter, user experience is more than just a market differentiator – ease-of-use and clarity are essential aspects of the product and make all the difference in dire situations during a wildfire.

Perimeter’s mission is to provide trusted information to “bridge the gap between governmental agencies and citizens.” It does this by improving the quality of current evacuation warnings and other communications: rather than rely on dry, text-based notifications sent to entire cities or counties, the application provides more targeted and location-aware notices for incidents and hazards which can be updated with additional details in real-time. The platform will also be able to collect user-submitted incident information during a wildfire or other disaster, which first responders can then access to potentially support their own response efforts.

Sometimes citizens have the most accurate and real-time information, before first responders show up. Using Perimeter, citizens can share contextual incident information during the catastrophe with the authorities. In the other direction, operations centers can use Perimeter to send citizens accurate and detailed evacuation maps with routes and guidance on where to go. Unlike a traditional text message, Perimeter provides real-time information on how a disaster is progressing.

Team updates:

• We closed our pre-seed round for over $1 million at the start of April, with the round led by Shawn Merani of Parade Ventures as well as Dustin Dolginow, with participation from the Alchemist Accelerator and the ONE WORLD Impact Fund. This round size is on the larger end for a pre-seed, but given our sales cycles we know this will most effectively get us through the fire season to achieve product-market fit.
• Perimeter was also featured in TechCrunch for closing our fundraising round, where they focused on our unique position within the public safety industry. This was closely followed by another article detailing the recent investments (including Perimeter) of Risk and Return, a VC firm focused on our nation’s high-risk public safety servants.
• Additionally, Perimeter was awarded a contract to work with the National Guard after winning the “Beat the Blaze” Hackathon hosted by the National Security and Innovation Network. This contract will connect us with first responders from across the country to continue development of the platform, and will help us expand our engineering team before the wildfire season.
• We also recently completed our first contract with the Palo Alto Office of Emergency Services, and will now be setting up a joint test bed with neighboring agencies. To support this and our future work with the National Guard, we have brought on new teammates to expand the engineering team in particular.

As the Product Designer, You Will

• Be responsible for the end-to-end design, crafting experiences and applications for both sides of the platform: citizens and agencies (i.e. firefighters, dispatchers, fire chiefs).
• Explore a breadth of design solutions, and consider multiple approaches to solving any given problem.
• Develop project plans, including dates and deliverables.
• Work autonomously alongside Product and Engineering leads.
• Develop appropriate research methodologies and test plans for projects.
• Communicate research and design decisions in an effective manner.
• Execute creative work from concepts and wireframes to final visual designs.
• Look for opportunities to take ownership. Proactively advise on areas of potential design investment.
• Consistently seek and offer feedback to peers and cross-functional partners.

You Will Love This Job If

• You have a genuine passion for what design and technology can do to help people.
• You are a systems-thinker that can logically visualize complex systems and user interaction flows.
• You are a problem solver that gets excited by big, complicated problems.
• You are ok with traveling and spending time in the field learning from our users.
• You are an empathetic user advocate that values designing with research and data analysis.
• You are a collaborator that can make and communicate design decisions with non-designers.
• You can operate with high degrees of ambiguity present in zero to one projects.
• You can roll with the punches of startup life.
• You are comfortable moving fast and iteratively improving your thinking and your designs.

You Should Get In Touch If

• You have 4+ years of design experience in an in-house, agency, or other relevant industry environment building and shipping applications or software at the level of whole features across a variety of platforms.
• You have a portfolio that shows a diversity of experiences. Strong in two core skills/capable in two others or expert in one/capable in three others (core skills: research/strategy, system design, interaction design, visual design).
• You are proficient in Figma and pick up tools easily.
• You are familiar with user-centered design best practices for web and mobile experiences.
• You have experience working on complex systems and applications.
• You have experience with bringing new products to market.

Interested? Great! Here’s what you should know:

This is a full-time role, and while we strongly prefer folks living in the Bay Area, we are open to folks anywhere in California and remote work is completely acceptable. Our team is high impact, low ego, and has an amazing culture to be part of. You should expect to be asked to travel within the state to perform on-site research and evaluation of the product.

We just finalized our first round of funding, which makes this is a special moment to join the team and leave a mark on a truly mission driven company. Seize a unique opportunity to lead the product into its market fit.

How To Apply

For your application to be considered, please submit a cover letter (yes, we read them!), resume, and your portfolio to careers@perimeterplatform.com. We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis . We look forward to reading yours!

We especially encourage applicants of different backgrounds, cultures, genders, experiences, abilities and perspectives to apply. We’re actively working to increase the diversity of experience and perspectives on our team and are looking for someone who can help continue to lead that process.