2026 Senior Conceptual Designer at Smart Design in New York, NY

We’re looking for a Senior Conceptual Designer for a full-time position in our Brooklyn Studio.

Smart Design is a strategic design and innovation consultancy. We work with clients ranging from fast-growing startups to some of the world’s most recognized brands. Design at Smart is deeply collaborative and multi-disciplinary. We come from a range of backgrounds and skillsets, but are unified by a passion for creating meaningful experiences that simply make life better.

This role is focused on generative research and uncovering insights to solve ambiguous problems.

The designer in this role will work closely with strategists, contribute a user experience lens to insights, and ideate broad, conceptual ideas to help solve for unmet needs.

This work is often not a website or an app, but defining experiences, services, features, and systems. It requires thinking beyond technology that is available today, and working across varied disciplines to create innovative experiences for our clients. Project deliverables are often narrative future visions, strategic frameworks, and high-fidelity conceptual prototypes.

We’re looking for designers that:

• Have a passion for the entire process of design — conducting foundational research, defining strategic insights, ideating, creating concepts and sketches, and designing high-fidelity prototypes.
• Thrive on collaborating across disciplines — partnering with strategists, visual designers, industrial designers, engineers, and technologists.
• Are forever curious learners — with a desire to expand their skillset, tackle new challenges, and explore new industries, tools, processes, and all things related to design and technology.
• Get excited for ambiguous and challenging projects — where open-ended outcomes and innovation are not intimidating.
• Think both systematically and create freely — with the ability to ideate wild ideas as well as pay excellent attention to the details.
• Plan and facilitate primary user research in partnership with our strategists — from generative in depth interviews to pilots, global surveys, workshops, and diary studies.
• Craft insights and design experiences that solve for the audiences’ unmet needs — while balancing client business objectives.
• Want to join a vibrant, creative Brooklyn studio — where every day we’re building and testing new products over far too much espresso.

Naturally, you have:

• A degree in interaction design, graphic design, or a related field
• 5+ years of experience developing digital strategy and defining innovative products and services. Bonus if you have experience collaborating on digital interfaces for physical products, or designed experiences within AI tools.
• Acted as a design lead, supporting a multi-disciplinary team to create innovative products, experiences, and strategies.
• Strong skills in areas like ideation and sketching, developing interface concepts, and an affinity for visual storytelling.
• Experience creating UX documentation including journey maps, user flows, landscape audits, product roadmaps, and design systems.
• Ability to prototype ideas in current prototyping software (e.g., Figma, Framer, code) with sharp attention to animation, micro-interactions, and responsive design.
• Sharp communication skills that connect users behaviors and mindsets to strategic design decisions through narrative storytelling.

Please note, the role is based in Brooklyn and the candidate will be onsite a minimum of 3 days per week.

The salary range will be dependent on experience and from a full-time salary perspective will range from $100,000-$125,000 plus benefits.

We are committed to creating an inclusive culture and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. At this time, we are unable to sponsor for this position.