Product Designer

About Ember

We're building the future of public transport — convenient, affordable, connected and zero-emission. Our goal is to make it easier and more enjoyable to get from A to B with Ember than it is with your own car.

Ember is a tech company, not a traditional bus operator. We've built a platform that coordinates our entire operation – everything from monitoring vehicles and controlling chargers to selling tickets and calculating ETAs. This allows us to use electric buses more intensively than anyone else in the world, leading to a massive reduction in emissions. It also helps us provide a much better passenger experience, with innovative features like demand-responsive stops.

We’re still tiny, with a handful of routes and 38 buses. The challenge is to scale this 100x whilst staying lean, increasing efficiency and delivering an even better product experience. We’ve raised equity from some of Europe’s leading climate VCs and are looking for mission-driven individuals who want to get on board and help take us to the next level.

The role

As a product designer, you'll be at the heart of our platform development. You'll work closely with our software engineers to design and develop features that delight our users and solve real problems. We are a product-led company, meaning product thinking runs through everything we do – from our website design to bus stop signs and payroll processes. As our first team member working exclusively on product, your role will be broad, contributing to the design and development of both external and internal features.

What you will do

You will work on a wide variety of projects that touch all aspects of our business. Examples might include:

• Designing the interface and views for a customer app.

• Chatting to our mechanics in order to form an opinion about the best way to develop a feature for tracking wheel re-torques.

• Researching textiles and wireless charging pads to design a best-in-class seat.

• Thinking deeply about the typical day of charging hub staff, to develop a task management system for them to use.

• Discussing possible data models to store guaranteed connections with our engineers and thinking about how connections should be presented to customers.

Your work will be making a difference to our planet by helping more people travel on zero-emission public transport.


Diversity and equality

At Ember, we support diversity across our team and customers. We work to ensure every employee feels respected and able to give their best, whether temporary, part-time or full-time. We’re happy to offer flexible working patterns where they make sense, are compassionate when it comes to time off and offer enhanced maternity and paternity leave.

Read more about our approach in our Equal Opportunities Policy.

What’s on offer

As well as a salary of £40,000 - £80,000 per annum, depending on your skills and relevant experience, you'll also be granted share options through an EMI scheme.

How do I apply?

Send your CV and a cover letter telling us why you're interested in the role.

You should have a desire to get involved early in Ember's growth story, with a real opportunity to make your mark. Your approach to work and thinking is more important to us than specific industry experience. You should think that the following sounds a lot like you:

• Strong background: Likely a few years professional experience in a high-performing environment but we value ability and motivation even more.
• Talented designer: You should be passionate about good design and have the skills to match. You should be very comfortable producing high-fidelity mockups. Good graphic design skills are a plus. Any work you can share as part of your application is helpful.
• First principles thinker: You like to think things through from the ground up and are comfortable challenging conventional wisdom. You don't just relay ideas from one part of the business to another. You should have an analytical mind capable of breaking complex processes down into simple features.
• Good taste: An appreciation for elegant and simple experiences, along with the knowledge of how to achieve them. As part of your application feel free to tell us about the products you like the most and why they're great.
• Engineering awareness: A good intuition for how hard implementing a design will be and how implementations can be simplified. You should care about edge cases, error messages, unhappy paths and pragmatism.
• Motivation: You should be excited by the idea of making an impact in a small growth company. Bus services are a real-world, tangible product where you can see the impact of changes on people’s day-to-day lives.

You are happy to work from our Edinburgh office at least a few days a week, because we value in-person communication. But we’re flexible if you want to work from home on some days