The Role
Lead industrial design direction for a makeup robot and related physical experiences. Own work from requirements and concept selection through CAD, surfacing, CMF, mockups, fabrication-ready design, and production support. Collaborate with engineering and external partners on architecture, manufacturability, prototyping, tolerances, assembly, accessibility, and serviceability. Establish internal design standards and carry design intent through EVT, DVT, and PVT while helping build the company’s industrial design function.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Overlay
The Role
What You'll Do
What We're Looking For
Bonus Points
Benefits
The Team
Culture & Values
Overlay is building the world's first intelligent makeup robot—reimagining beauty application through robotics, perception, and design. As a venture-backed, pre-launch startup, we're defining a new category of personal robotics at the intersection of self-expression and engineering. Our system operates directly on the human face, requiring an unprecedented level of precision, safety, and real-world robustness.
We've raised significant funding and we're a small, technical team building in person in Oakland. We're making something real that doesn't exist yet — and we're looking for an industrial designer to shape the physical product experience customers will see, touch, and trust.
The Role
You'll be our first in-house industrial designer, joining while our external industrial design firm is still deeply involved.
This is a senior role, but it's a builder's role too. You’ll work closely with the founder, our founding digital designer, and engineering, with support from external partners where it makes sense. This is our first step toward moving Overlay's industrial design capability in-house and you’ll set the bar for everyone who joins after you.
Our customer has high standards and great taste. Physical design that reaches her has to feel premium, approachable, and a little magic — across a robot, an in-store station, and every detail she touches.
What makes this role exciting:
- You’ll take ownership of a new program that will get a lot of visibility when we launch.
- The product is genuinely fun to design for. Form, human factors, CMF, interaction, and retail experience are one canvas.
- The robot, consumables, accessories, and packaging will move under you over time but you’ll continue getting external support throughout our early manufacturing runs.
- You'll work closely with the founder and engineering team, prototype at full scale, and see your decisions become real quickly.
What You'll Do
- Own Overlay's industrial design direction across new products.
- Lead the industrial design from requirements and concept selection through refined CAD, CMF, appearance models, and fabrication-ready design intent.
- Create sketches, storyboards, high-quality renderings, surface models, and full-scale mockups that make decisions concrete.
- Partner with mechanical engineering to resolve component architecture, packaging constraints, tolerances, assembly, cleaning, serviceability, and accessibility without losing design intent.
- Direct industrial design, model-making, and fabrication partners during the transition, with clear reviews, decisions, documentation, and handoffs.
- Carry design intent through DFM, supplier reviews, prototype builds, EVT, DVT, and PVT while establishing Overlay's internal industrial design tools and file standards.
What We're Looking For
You don't need to check every box — if most of this sounds like you, please apply.
- 7+ years in industrial design, or an equivalent body of shipped work, with ownership from early concept through production.
- Advanced 3D CAD and surfacing skills in tools such as SolidWorks, Onshape, Rhino, or Alias, plus strong rendering and visualization ability.
- A portfolio with range: exceptional form development, proportion, detail resolution, CMF judgment, and work with personality.
- Strong working knowledge of materials, manufacturing processes, prototyping, ergonomics, tolerances, and DFM.
- Ease with ambiguity, change, and the occasional blank page — you set direction, make the work, and ship without an industrial design team around you.
Bonus Points
- Experience with consumer hardware, robotics, beauty devices, wearables, or other products that operate close to the body.
- Experience designing retail fixtures or attended service experiences.
- Knowledge of accessibility and human-factors testing for a broad range of users.
- Experience bringing industrial design in-house from an external agency or building an ID function from scratch.
- A real love of makeup, skincare, beauty, and its subcultures.
- Mandarin speaker. Some members are based in China and our weekly meetings include a mix of English and Chinese, with engineering team members traveling back and forth.
Benefits
- Highly competitive salary & generous early-stage equity
- Best-in-class medical, dental & vision insurance
- 401(k) matching program
- Flexible Time Off with 10 paid holidays
- Commuter benefits
- Office in downtown Oakland near 19th Street BART station
The Team
- Small, fast-moving team with high ownership and low process
- Strong bias toward shipping, learning, and iterating quickly
- In-person collaboration in our Oakland office
Culture & Values
- Move Fast, Move Smart: act quickly, with good judgment.
- Ownership: see things through, from idea to result.
- Disagree, Then Commit: talk it out openly, then row in the same direction.
- Intellectual Honesty: be candid, stay curious, follow the evidence.
- Show, Don't Tell: real, working results over talk.
Compensation: The annual salary range for this position is $150K - $200K annually based on level in addition to equity & benefits.
Overlay is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds.
Skills Required
- 7+ years of industrial design experience, or an equivalent body of shipped work with ownership from early concept through production
- Advanced 3D CAD and surfacing skills using tools such as SolidWorks, Onshape, Rhino, or Alias
- Strong rendering and visualization ability
- Portfolio demonstrating form development, proportion, detail resolution, CMF judgment, and product personality
- Working knowledge of materials, manufacturing processes, prototyping, ergonomics, tolerances, and design for manufacturability
- Ability to work through ambiguity and independently set direction, create designs, and ship products
- Experience with consumer hardware, robotics, beauty devices, wearables, or products operating close to the body
- Experience designing retail fixtures or attended service experiences
- Knowledge of accessibility and human-factors testing for diverse users
- Experience bringing industrial design in-house from an external agency or building an industrial design function from scratch
- Love of makeup, skincare, beauty, and related subcultures
- Mandarin language ability
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The Company
What We Do
Overlay is building the world’s first intelligent makeup robot—reimagining beauty application through robotics, perception, and design.
