Forward Deployed Product Designer

Scale AI•Washington, DC

7d•$210,000 - $270,000•Onsite

About The Position

Scale is hiring a Senior/Staff Product Designer to lead product design for Scale's Public Sector business unit. The mission of Scale's Public Sector team is to bring AI-powered decision support directly to government and defense customers - deploying trusted, mission-critical tools in the field, not just building internal software. This role will own the end-to-end design of one of our core mission workflows: planning (synthesizing information for senior decision-makers), operations (surfacing high-signal alerts from complex data streams), or analytical (research and reporting tools) - partnering with product from day one to shape ambiguous, high-stakes problems into deployable customer-facing experiences. This is a forward-deployed role: you'll work directly and regularly on-site with government and defense customers, representing design in the room and building the trust needed to get stakeholder buy-in without a manager present.

Requirements

10–15 years of experience across a range of design settings and problem types.
Experience owning end-to-end B2B or enterprise product experiences at a senior/staff level.
Comfortable working with high ambiguity and evolving requirements, typical of early-stage government/enterprise engagements.
Experience designing complex workflow UI, dashboards, or data-heavy/mapping interfaces.
Strong client-facing presence - confident presenting to and winning over senior stakeholders in person.
Working understanding of front-end development and how to hand off clean, implementable designs; comfort collaborating directly with engineers on code.
Willingness to travel regularly to customer sites.

Nice To Haves

Experience in a client-facing role where you presented directly to senior stakeholders.
Exposure to AI/ML tools and fluency using AI in your own design workflow.
Experience contributing to a design system or shared interaction patterns across multiple products or teams.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end design - from ambiguous, undefined requirements through wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and interactive prototypes - for a customer-facing government/defense product experience.
Partner directly with Product as a peer from the earliest stages of a project, not just at handoff.
Work forward-deployed, on-site with customers, building direct relationships and confidently socializing design decisions with stakeholders.
Design for complex, data-dense workflows: dashboards, mapping interfaces, alerting systems, and analytical reporting tools.
Work directly in code alongside engineers, going beyond static mockups to help build and refine the shipped experience.
Contribute design assets and interaction patterns back to the broader platform, not just the account or project you're staffed on.
Help calibrate and grow the design team by participating in portfolio reviews and interviews as we scale this function.
Navigate high ambiguity - customer requirements are often not clean or fully defined, and you'll need to help define them.