Responsibilities
About Team: The Innovation Team is part of the Industrial Design organization, with a primary focus on incubating new ideas and product concepts. The team takes a holistic view of the product experience and explores how emerging technologies can be leveraged to create meaningful, delightful, and genuinely useful user experiences. We strongly believe in learning by building. As a result, the team continuously seeks individuals who can rapidly prototype and develop end-to-end product experiences, enabling us to quickly test, validate, and refine ideas through an iterative, fast-paced development cycle. About the role The rapid evolution of technology over the past year has led us to seek a Senior Industrial Designer who is equal parts designer and builder—someone who can move rapidly from concept to functional demos that validate new interaction loops. The person will design physical products as contextual nodes in a distributed system, personally prototyping both hardware and software to validate the critical flow: sensing → inference → feedback → user behavior change. In the current landscape, it is impossible to validate hardware user experience without functional prototypes. However, as this role sits within the Industrial Design team, the output cannot be limited to rough engineering samples. The Design Prototype Mandate: These prototypes serve as iterations—evolving from rough concept validations to more polished versions—and act as the primary tool for the productization phase. The later versions of the prototypes must be professionally designed and robust enough to help the team evaluate critical trade-offs, weigh pros and cons, and make decisions on the final architecture. This blend of aesthetic fidelity and technical functionality is essential for driving true product and experience innovation. Key Responsibilities: Architecting the AI Contextual Ecosystem: Translate our information architecture into physical form, distributing intelligence across multiple AI devices, wearable hardware, and peripheral nodes. Iterative Design Prototyping: Lead the build process from initial "works-like" hacking to high-fidelity "Design Prototypes." These artifacts must accurately represent form factor constraints (design intents) to inform engineering and product decisions. Sensor Architecture & "Shared Awareness": Define the ideal sensor payload to enable AI context perception, ensuring the placement is socially acceptable and functionally optimal. (A big Plus) Physical AI Semantics: Develop a "physical language" (light, haptics, material form) that makes the AI’s intent legible to the user, ensuring the device feels like a partner rather than a tool. Trade-Off Analysis: Use these high-fidelity prototypes to demonstrate the benefits and constraints of specific hardware choices to engineering and product teams. Required Deliverables for Candidates: We expect this person to deliver high-fidelity concepts, functional prototypes for trade-off analysis, and partnership storyboards that demonstrate the device's role in daily life.
Qualifications
Minimum qualifications Bachelor’s or Master’s in Industrial Design, Computational Design, Mechanical Engineering, Architecture, or a related technical field. Hands-on experience with parametric CAD and computational design tools (e.g., Fusion 360, Onshape, Rhino/Grasshopper). Strong scripting/programming skills in Python and/or similar languages for CAD automation or geometry processing. Familiarity with AI-assisted workflows (simulation, generative form exploration, or design evaluation) and basic cloud-compute environments. Comfort working in highly iterative, cross-functional environments with designers, engineers, and prototyping teams. Preferred qualifications Experience building FeatureScripts in Onshape and/or custom Grasshopper/Python tools in Rhino. Experience with cloud-based simulation or optimization (e.g., running design-of-experiments or parameter sweeps at scale). Understanding of manufacturing processes and design-for-assembly (DFA) principles, and willingness to partner with manufacturing engineering. Portfolio demonstrating system-based design, computational design work, and examples of automation or AI-assisted workflows.
Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $123520 - $318960 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
About Pico
Founded in April 2015, Pico is a VR company committed to developing immersive and interactive VR experiences for people around the world. Pico also provides tailor-made solutions for our enterprise clients in the fields of education and healthcare.
Why Join ByteDance
Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.
As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
Diversity & Inclusion
ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
Reasonable Accommodation
ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request
