Jobs and Careers

Industrial Designer - Stealth Industrial Innovation Project (Contract)

UKRemotecontractVerifiedPosted 17 Apr 2026

About the role

Industrial DesignerRole Type: Contract / Project-BasedLocation: Remote with periodic travel for site visitsEngagement: 6 months
About UP.Labs & This ProjectUP.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 RoleYou will shape how the solutions we develop are physically, operationally, and experientially designed. This is not UI/UX — this is the design of systems, services, and proof-of-concept configurations that exist in the real world of physical infrastructure and industrial facilities.
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