Senior Futures Design Strategist (US Remote)

Motorola Solutions•Washington, DC

1d•$135,000 - $150,000•Remote

About The Position

Motorola Solutions is seeking a Senior Futures Design Strategist to help shape Horizon 3 (5–10+ year) product opportunities and connect futures work to actionable business decisions. The role makes future concepts tangible through artifacts, interfaces, and narratives that help users and leaders explore and critique them, then translates promising concepts into value propositions, opportunity briefs, and investment choices. As the team’s main design-focused individual contributor, the strategist bridges futures work with teams that explore and build, ensuring promising concepts have a credible next step and a clear owner. The position is part of the Futures Insights Team, a research-led futures and strategic foresight pod within the UX Research organization. The team partners across functions to investigate emerging opportunities, ground concepts in user needs and market and technology context, and create strategic option value for Motorola Solutions. The role collaborates across US and European time zones and may require travel for in-person research. The position requires a bachelor’s degree and at least five years in UX research or design strategy, along with at least three years in design strategy, speculative design, innovation strategy, or strategic foresight in a product strategy team, consultancy, or incubation setting. The target base salary range is $135,000–$150,000 USD. Candidates may reside anywhere in the United States.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree and at least 5 years of experience in UX research or design strategy.
At least 3 years of experience in design strategy, speculative design, innovation strategy, or strategic foresight within a product strategy team, consultancy, or incubation setting.
Portfolio showing tangible future artifacts and frameworks grounded in human-centered research, with evidence that the work progressed to funded exploration, product roadmaps, pilots, or new ventures.
Deep expertise in speculative design, design fiction, and scenario building.
Exceptional visual craft, including experience with Figma, FigJam, physical prototyping, or video narrative.
Working fluency in how businesses create and capture value, including business model design, market and competitive dynamics, and risk and return.
Practical command of foresight and research methods, including scenario planning, backcasting, STEEP, causal layered analysis, and Delphi.
Proven ability to guide R&D, product, and design teams through futures work without direct authority.
Willingness to travel for in-person research when needed and collaborate across US and European time zones.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree (Master’s or Ph.D.) or equivalent professional expertise in Design Futures, Strategic Foresight, HCI, Anthropology, Systems Design, or a related field.
Experience in a design-led consultancy, corporate innovation or new ventures group, or incubation setting.
Experience using or building AI tools for signal scanning, trend tracking, and synthesizing unstructured data.
Track record researching complex socio-technical systems, such as mobility, health, or organizational analysis.
Experience in public safety, government, or enterprise security.

Responsibilities

Create tangible future-state artifacts, including mock interfaces, speculative journey maps, and world-building narratives, so users and stakeholders can explore and pressure-test 5–10+ year concepts before investment.
Translate future concepts into business opportunities by defining value propositions, target users, business models, competitive positioning, key assumptions, and relevance to Motorola Solutions.
Scope Strategic Opportunity Briefs, run activation workshops, and transition validated concepts to downstream R&D, product, and incubation teams with a defined next step and owner.
Present strategic options, trade-offs, and risks to C-suite and senior leaders, and recommend which futures to invest in, monitor, or set aside.
Partner with researchers to ground concepts in human needs and market and technology context.
Contribute to AI-assisted signal scanning and facilitate foresight methods such as STEEP, causal layered analysis (CLA), and Delphi to turn weak signals into design hypotheses.
Mentor peers, raise the quality of experiential design, and demonstrate how futures work creates strategic option value across the company.