Senior Product Designer - 3D Applications (Natick)

Cognex is the world’s leading provider of vision systems, software, sensors, and industrial barcode readers used in manufacturing automation. Cognex’s advanced AI enabled vision products help companies improve product quality, eliminate production errors, lower manufacturing costs, and exceed consumer expectations for high quality products at an affordable price. Many of these applications involve 3D vision systems that capture point cloud data, depth maps, and surface geometry to enable precise measurement, robot guidance, and spatial inspection in complex factory environments. We are deeply committed to fostering an inclusive and equitable work environment, guided by our Work Hard, Play Hard, Move Fast culture, which celebrates employee innovation, determination, and dedication in a dynamic, fun, and distinctive atmosphere.

We are working on a hybrid schedule: three days in the office and two days from home. Work‑from‑home days are Tuesday and Friday, with in‑office days on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

The Team:

The UX Design team at Cognex was formed 3 years ago and has been growing in strategic importance to reflect the Company’s focus on providing “advanced machine vision, made easy” to our customers. We design web-based interfaces for Cognex’s diverse suite of enterprise B2B products and services. Our UIs are atomically consumed by Cognex product teams to develop and maintain a unified look & feel across multiple workflows and product lines.

We work closely with multi-national teams of deep learning researchers, computer vision engineers, hardware designers, systems integrators, and product marketers. We strive to understand the underlying technology, including its limitations and opportunities, and we then use that understanding to define rich user experiences for complex computer vision tools.

We are actively building up our design system and rolling it out across our product lines. There is a lot of exciting upcoming design work at Cognex, and you get to shape that future.

Responsibilities:

• Design intuitive interfaces for 3D vision tools, including visualizations of point clouds, depth data, and spatial calibration workflows — translating complex 3D data into clear, actionable UI for factory-floor operators and engineers.
• Lead multiple projects through all aspects of the design cycle (requirements gathering, brainstorming, sketching, prototyping, testing, iterating, etc.)
• Work with our 4-person design team to document, maintain, and architect the Cognex design system based on the Angular Material library.
• Design systematic, reusable components using the atomic design philosophy.
• Participate in design reviews with our design team and other stakeholders, iteratively honing the design and implementation of the whole team’s UIs.
• Collaborate with engineers and product marketers to ensure that the implementation of your designs result in a delightful and cohesive overall product experience.
• Create and maintain internal documentation for your designs and evangelize their use across the company.
• Shape the design culture within our design team and at Cognex generally.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• 4-8 years of product design / UX experience, designing web-based products that were built and shipped to real users.
• Experience designing software for 3D applications, products (e.g. game engines, 3D printing hardware), vision systems, robotics, or industrial automation — including interfaces that surface spatial data such as point clouds, depth maps, or CAD overlays.
• Experience with Figma, or similar design software
• Experience deploying, maintaining, and improving a design system across a large organization.
• Experience designing for cross-browser and cross-device compatibility (e.g. desktop Chrome, mobile Safari, etc.)
• Familiarity with the Chrome dev tools, and a willingness to inspect the code to ensure the engineers built your designs appropriately. You are not expected to author code for this role.
• Ability to work as a member of a team in a loosely structured and continuously improving agile process.
• Team player with ability to work effectively and share knowledge across the team
• Willingness to propose and fight for bold designs
• Humility to take critical feedback and iterate on a design until it’s right
• Strong presentation, communication and interpersonal skills
• Nice to have: Experience designing for AI and deep learning systems.

Minimum education and work experience required:

• Proficiency and willingness to communicate in English
• A portfolio demonstrating the ability to utilize and adapt an existing design system, ideally including examples of industrial, scientific, or data-dense UIs — and a strong plus if any work involves 3D data visualization or factory automation software.
• Nice to have: Bachelors or Master’s degree in HCI, a related discipline, or a related technical field.

Cognex believes in fair and equitable pay. A reasonable estimate of the base salary range for this role is 120,000 USD - 200,000 USD. Please note that actual salaries may vary within the range, or be above or below the range, based on factors including, but not limited to, education, training, experience, professional achievement, business need, and location. In addition to base salary, employees will participate in either an annual bonus plan based on company and individual performance or a sales incentive plan.

This position provides a comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and vision insurance; a 401(k) retirement plan with company matching; employer-paid disability, family leave, and life insurance; paid time off (including holidays); optional voluntary benefits; as well as recognition and wellness programs.