Who We Are 

Moon Creative Lab is a design-led venture studio based in Palo Alto and Tokyo. We incubate new ventures across an ever expanding array of sectors – healthcare, agriculture, entertainment, technology, industrial and more. 

Moon’s mission is to help Mitsui & Co, one of Japan’s largest organizations, in its pursuit to become a future-forward, entrepreneurial company. Moon works to unlock the creativity of Mitsui’s 45,000 strong global workforce to build innovative businesses that will have an exponential impact on the world. We do this by bringing together the best talent in design, engineering, product and more to create bold new ventures from zero to one. 

At Moon, you will:

• Address real human needs that have far-reaching social impact
• Work across different disciplines, industries, and cultures 
• Start with people and leverage the beauty and messiness of human-centered design

Moon is looking for people who are passionate about unlocking the innate creativity of others while designing impactful businesses. Come join us!

Who We Are Looking For 

As a UX Design Director, you will join a global Design Team that engages with our community of Entrepreneurs building new ventures. You thrive in a fast-paced, creative, and multicultural environment. You’re driven by your curiosity, and not afraid to ask the hard questions. You strive to understand why, and perhaps most of all, ambiguity is your friend.

We are looking for an exceptional UX Director who wants to be part of bringing human-centered innovation into the world. You will have the opportunity to discover and serve unmet user needs by applying your expertise in building products and services to address real-world problems.

We are looking for a UX Design Director who knows how to utilize their craft expertise to inspire entrepreneurs, designers and researchers, provide guidance, and drive impact. They will help build, develop, and lead the design team of designers and researchers across Moon's Silicon Valley and Tokyo studios. 

In this role you will leverage your entrepreneurial experience and mindset to help Moon create change through the design of scalable, sustainable solutions that are human-centered and new to the world. 

What You'll Do

Providing Design Direction + Being Hands-On.
You will help entrepreneurs, researchers, and designers see alternative ways to think about a design problem and lead them through hurdles and moments where they are stuck. You accomplish this by being hands-on, creating tools, processes, and systems that produce transparency, alignment, and direction. You’re also not afraid to get your hands dirty and are capable of doing the work side by side to help others.

Collaborating closely with Design, Product and Engineering
You will work closely with the leadership team to ensure an enjoyable user experience across all products, constantly sharing ideas and learnings. You will also partner with product, engineering, design and venture heads to ensure projects are well-defined, impactful, and successfully executed in both our Tokyo and Silicon Valley studio locations.

Growing the Design Craft and Discipline
You will be able to leverage your UX expertise and perspective to inspire others and help build and grow a global high performing design team that spans across Silicon Valley and Tokyo.

The Must-Haves

• 8-10 years of professional UX experience in-house, ideally at startup companies
• Speaks Japanese and English fluently
• Ability to inspire and guide teams through craft expertise and lead with empathy
• Highly collaborative and flexible, with the ability to stretch across skill sets and roles dynamically to bridge different parts of the business
• Experience working directly with designers, researchers, product managers, and engineers
• Experience leading and coaching teams through the product design and development process, and through at least one product launch to market
• Ability and passion for growing, mentoring, nurturing and leading a global team of researchers and designers through the design process- from ideation to production design while building and evolving new ventures
• Strategic approach and high-level thinking when achieving organizational goals
• Ability to jump into leading and even executing various parts of UX design process
• Ability to translate research insights into actionable design solutions and guiding teams through the synthesis and ideation process
• Ability to be hands-on and proactive in building, prototyping, and evolving digital products
• Experience designing beautiful user interfaces influenced by a point of view on what great design looks like, leveraging tools such as Sketch or Figma
• Strong communication and storytelling skills, using various mediums and formats 
• Ability to thrive in an ambiguous and rapidly changing environment
• Ability to travel for business, especially between Moon offices (Silicon Valley and Tokyo) 

The Nice-to-Haves 

• Experience working with distributed teams across multiple time zones