UP.Labs is a first-of-its-kind venture lab unlocking the future of transportation and mobility.
The Role
Applied Systems Designer
Role Type: Contract / Project-Based
Location: Remote with periodic travel for site visits
Engagement: 6 months
About UP.Labs & This Project
UP.Labs is a venture studio that builds and launches vertical AI-enabled B2B SaaS companies across transportation, mobility, industrial, and adjacent sectors. We move from insight to fundable business — fast.
UP.Labs is running a structured 6-month innovation sprint for a major industrial player. By Month 6, we need two fully developed, investment-ready business plans complete with POC designs.
The Role
You will shape how the solutions we develop are physically, operationally, and experientially designed. This is not UI/UX and not CPG industrial design — this is the design of systems, services, and proof-of-concept configurations that exist in the real world of physical infrastructure and industrial facilities.
We're looking for an industry agnostic design thinker adept at taking an ambiguous problem and designing an operational solution, complete with visual representation. You'll work alongside the business and research team to translate validated opportunity areas into concrete solution concepts, then develop POC designs rigorous enough to present to an Investment Committee. Your output is the bridge between strategic insight and operational reality.
What You'll Do
- Participate in 2-day structured ideation workshops for each of 3 approved opportunity areas, using methods including analogous industry models, constraint inversion, Jobs-to-Be-Done reframing, and co-creation with ecosystem participants
- Generate and visualize 8–12 solution concepts per opportunity area
- Apply feasibility filters to eliminate concepts that don't comply with constraints and timeline
- Develop service blueprints, system diagrams, and operational flow maps for shortlisted solution concepts
- Design two POC configurations that are scoped, testable, and capital-efficient — each with defined geography, volume, counterparty, timeline, and binary success metrics
- Create visual artifacts for IC presentations: concept renderings, process flows, system architecture diagrams, and POC design specs
- Collaborate with the project's Analyst on unit economics by identifying the physical and operational assumptions that drive cost structures
- Conduct field visits to understand site realities: what things looks like, how elements function together in practice, what equipment footprints require
What We're Looking For
- 4–8 years of industrial design, service design, or systems design experience — ideally across energy, infrastructure, agriculture, logistics, or hard-tech domains
- Demonstrated experience designing physical systems or services that operate in industrial or field environments — not purely digital products
- Strong visualization skills: you can communicate a complex system concept clearly through sketches, diagrams, or prototypes before committing to formal deliverables
- Comfortable operating in conditions of high ambiguity — you can generate useful concepts even before all constraints are known
- Ability to work collaboratively with researchers, analysts, and business strategists inside a time-boxed sprint process
- Familiarity with POC design methodology: defining scope, setting measurable success criteria, sizing capital requirements
- Experience in oil & gas, water infrastructure, agriculture, or industrial logistics is a genuine advantage
What Success Looks Like
- Viable, well-scoped solution concepts for 3 opportunity areas — each grounded in operational reality, not just strategy
- Two IC-approved POC designs with clear scope, timeline, capital cap, binary success metrics, and identified killer assumption being tested
- Design artifacts (blueprints, system maps, concept visuals) that give IC members confidence in operational feasibility
- Physical and operational assumptions that hold up under unit economics pressure-testing with the project's Analyst
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The Company
What We Do
We work with global corporate partners to identify the most pressing challenges that they, and broader society, face. Inspired by these complex problems, we launch startups built by proven entrepreneurs, product leaders and technologists that use their agility and talent to develop transformative solutions. After these companies have matured and proven market fit, our corporate partners are able to acquire them, reaping strategic value while enriching their culture and core business. We believe this to be the shortest road to a faster, cleaner, safer, and more accessible future.
Why Work With Us
We launch and innovate 6-8 portfolio organizations a year where no day is the same.
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