Lead Product Designer

Job Description

The Supercritical mission

Supercritical is the gateway to the carbon removal market. One third of corporate buyers including The Economist, Virgin Atlantic, and Rothschild & Co use Supercritical’s marketplace to navigate the market, build portfolios of high-quality vetted projects, and securely transact across spot purchases and offtake agreements. Supercritical is the marketplace of choice for visionary companies with ambitious climate goals that need to be met today, not decades from now. We recently raised a $13m Series A, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, to accelerate our mission to scale carbon removal to gigatonnes.

Why is carbon removal critical?

Carbon removal includes nature-based solutions like afforestation and cutting-edge technologies that literally pull carbon from the sky and store it underground for millennia. Our team of climate scientists act as an outsourced carbon removal procurement partner to our customers. They source and vet carbon removal projects from the frontier of science with a rigorous method that covers 100s of dimensions across environmental, market, and delivery risk categories.

We need to scale to remove 10 billion tons a year by 2050 to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming. This is over 14,000x the rate we are removing carbon at today. We've only removed a few thousand tonnes to date. This will be a trillion dollar industry by 2050.

About the Design Team

You’ll be the second full-time design hire at Supercritical, reporting to the Director of Design. Design works within the Product team closely in conjunction with PMs and Engineers. We’re a small but growing company, so this role will be hugely impactful in shaping both the culture of design at Supercritical — as well as the broader culture of the company.

The Role

We’re looking for a Lead product designer to join our business as we enter an exciting phase of growth. We want to find someone capable of crafting thoughtful, high-quality user interfaces who understands the importance of digital experiences as a brand touchpoint. You’ll report to the Director of Design. If you’re motivated by answering design, user, and strategic questions for the good of the planet, then you could be a great fit.

What you’ll be doing

• Designing products from start to finish, as part of our software platform (used by some of the world’s largest enterprise CDR buyers)
• Designing our main marketing website and microsites
• Designing design: As designer number 2, you'll be instrumental in defining the product design process at Supercritical
• Shaping how the world thinks about carbon removal: as a nascent industry, you’ll have an incredible opportunity to define how carbon removal is communicated
• Making tradeoffs that take into account user experience, business priorities, and engineering effort
• Working cross-functionally with Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, Sales and Climate and Supply teams to deliver products that meet customer needs
• Tackling problems as you see fit, using tools you’re comfortable with: wireframing, creating interactive prototypes, doing user research — whatever works to help solve the challenge at hand
• Sharing your work early and often in your team, and presenting regularly to the wider company

Requirements

You’ll be a great fit if:

• You’re experienced in using Figma
• You’ve shipped products and seen how your design decisions affect them over time
• You’re proactive, can work independently, and be resilient in a fast-paced industry
• You believe in clear, easy-to-understand communication
• You demonstrate good taste, and can articulate why you think a piece of design is good or bad, successful or unsuccessful
• You understand and care about your craft; but you’re willing to make tradeoffs, and be scrappy where necessary, to move quickly
• You’re happy to share early ideas and value feedback from others
• You're motivated by contributing to climate change solutions

Benefits

What values can you expect from your colleagues?

We have set ourselves the mission of leading the carbon removal market to 14,000x its current size by 2050. In order to do that we need brave adventurers that think huge and deliver at speed. We call this the 14,000x mindset. The key components of the 14,000x mindset are:

• Ownership mentality: We relish autonomy and we create it for others. We are deeply curious and thrive on understanding the root cause of complex problems. We take ownership over our own and our team’s development by giving and soliciting direct and actionable feedback.
• Move fast: We identify the most important problems to solve and cut everything else. We test ideas early so we don’t waste time on dead ends. We default to action and deliver awesome results.
• Radiate positive energy: We come to problems with energy and passion. We nurture new ideas and engage positively in testing them. We inspire our colleagues to go further and are resilient to set backs. We recharge by taking time off. We are here for a great day, not a long day.
• Communicate proactively: We communicate simply and directly. We broadcast updates, insights and lessons learnt, especially when things haven’t gone to plan. We give as much context as possible so our teammates can make great decisions.

Benefits

• Annual leave: unlimited
• One company-wide day off on the first Friday of every month
• Pension: 3% employer contribution when matched by 5% employee contribution
• Hybrid working: remote first with the option to work from our London co-working space 1-2 days per week
• Other benefits: £1000 annual wellbeing allowance and working-from-home equipment budget up to £500
• Monthly company socials in London
• Purchase high quality carbon removal offsets for your personal emissions from our inventory

Diversity and Inclusion

We’ve been committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace since day one of the company. We’re the only company we’re aware of with a 50:50 gender balanced list of investors and our day to day processes are always defined with D&I in mind, for example our remote first policy and flexibility around working time.

We are excited to encourage applications and interest from individuals underrepresented in the climate and tech space. Climate change and climate justice is a social issue that cuts across race and gender. We welcome applicants with lived experience across these issues.

Studies have shown that some groups of people, like women, are less likely to apply to a role unless they meet 100% of the job requirements. Whoever you are, if you like one of our jobs, we encourage you to apply as you might just be the candidate we hire!

UK Sponsorship & Applicants currently outside the UK

• UK Work Sponsorship: Unfortunately, at this stage of our growth, we are unable to offer UK sponsorship to applicants.
• Candidates who live outside the UK who are not looking to live and work in the UK, are within 3 hours of the GMT/BST timezone and are willing to travel to London quarterly are encouraged to apply. Please note we will use an Employer of Record arrangement in these circumstances.

Process:

1. Recruiter screening call
2. An informal chat with the Director of Design
3. Formal interview with Director of Design
4. Design Task & presentation
5. Founder interview