Design Lead - Product Experience
Location: Madrid/Berlin/Oslo (Hybrid) · Full-time · Competitive compensation
Shape the Future of Marine Navigation
Orca is modernising marine navigation, building a planning and navigation platform for recreational boating. Our mobile-first product is used by hundreds of thousands of boaters and shaped by real-world use on the water. We’re looking for a Lead Design to help shape the future of Orca.
Your Mission
Own the end-to-end design of Orca’s navigation platform and establish the product design discipline inside the company.
This role is responsible for transforming complex marine navigation problems into clear, reliable, and elegant product experiences across mobile, hardware interfaces, and future navigation systems.
You will define the design process, design system, and research practice while working extremely closely with product and engineering. You’ll define how our users plan voyages, monitor weather, race across bays, and cross oceans—with tools that are elegant, intuitive, and built for the real world.
What You’ll Do
Product Design Ownership - Own the end-to-end design of Orca’s product experience:
Problem framing and user research
Interaction design and prototyping
Validation and final UI specifications
Product Discovery and Research - Lead continuous product discovery through:
User interviews with boat owners
Usability testing and rapid prototyping
Insight synthesis
Design System and Product Consistency - Define and maintain Orca’s design system to ensure consistency across mobile app and hardware interfaces:
Design Process - Establish a clear design operating system - research documentation, design planning, iteration cycles, feedback loops, and risk tracking - to ensure transparency into design progress and uncertainty.
Collaboration with Engineering - Work extremely closely with engineering during development through iterative design reviews, validation of implementation, and continuous improvement of flows.
Leadership - Drive design planning and prioritization with product leadership. Over time you will mentor designers and build the design organisation.
What You’ll Bring
We don’t expect you to tick every box, but you should bring deep experience in product design for complex products and design leadership.
Design Skills
6+ years designing consumer digital products
Proven ownership of a consumer app experience end-to-end
Strong portfolio demonstrating complex UX problems solved clearly
Deep proficiency with Figma and prototyping tools
Experience building or scaling a design system
Experience conducting and synthesizing user research
Leadership & Execution
Experience working in early or growth-stage startups
Strong communication and documentation skills
Experience working closely with hardware products
Experience mentoring designers or leading design direction
Why This Role Is So Exciting
You’re reinventing a stuck industry. Marine navigation has barely changed in decades. Orca is flipping the script—designing from first principles for modern sailors, with tech that feels more like the future than a manual from 1998.
You’re designing for the real world—not just the screen. This is interface design that gets tested under 30-knot winds and blazing sun, with gloved hands and choppy waves. Your work will guide boats through tight harbors and across vast oceans.
You’ll work with a world-class crew spanning product, growth, and engineering. Our team includes product thinkers obsessed with user experience, full-stack engineers, a seasoned firmware group, marine and cartography experts, and passionate boaters building the tools they’ve always wished existed.
Compensation & Benefits
Competitive salary and meaningful equity. We’re building something big and want you to share in the upside.
Hybrid setup in Madrid, Berlin or Oslo. Enjoy the best of both worlds: in-person collaboration and flexible remote days.
Sailing time and sea trials. Take the tools you design out into the wild—test features onboard, join field trips, and experience real-world use firsthand.
Learn to sail. Curious about boating but not a sailor (yet)? We’ll cover sailing lessons so you can better understand our users—and have some fun along the way.
Annual team offsites. We gather each year to reconnect, reflect, and go sailing together.
Apply Now
Send your portfolio and CV to careers@getorca.com.
Tell us a little about why this caught your eye—what you’d love to work on, or why this mission speaks to you.
Not quite ready to apply? Reach out anyway. We’re always happy to talk to great designers—whether now or later.
