Prize Designer – First Principles Thinker

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📋 Description

• Lead the end-to-end design and development of [REDACTED] competitions, from framing the problem and defining success metrics to conducting research, engaging stakeholders, shaping the prize model, and producing final design documentation.
• Work within a structured design process guided by the Prize Design Director and seek Director input at key decision points to stay aligned with organizational priorities and quality standards.
• Operate with a high degree of self-direction between check-ins with the Prize Design Director.
• Proactively surface blockers, risks, and decisions that need Director input rather than waiting for scheduled touchpoints.
• Adapt quickly when the Prize Design Director reprioritizes projects or shifts design direction mid-cycle, maintaining momentum and timelines.
• Develop project plans, budgets, and timelines, coordinating with the Project Manager so deliverables meet deadlines and quality standards.
• Work closely with internal teams and collaborators, keeping alignment with Domain Leads, leadership, and Advancement on strategy, content, and positioning.
• Fold operational, financial, and communications inputs from Finance, Marketing, and Operations into the prize model and documentation.
• Identify and engage external experts and stakeholders, including designing and facilitating workshops, technical interviews, and other participatory research to inform design choices.
• Facilitate productive sponsor relationships as requested, with clear communication, updates, and deliverables that align with sponsor goals and [REDACTED] standards.
• Contribute to organization-wide ideation and concept development such as Global Visioneering and prize ideation/ "Moonshot" workshops.
• Maintain and improve [REDACTED]'s prize design methodology by staying fluent in current processes and documentation, capturing lessons learned from past and active designs, and updating tools and practices.
• Serve as an internal resource on the prize design process and keep core documentation current.
• Elevate [REDACTED]'s prize design process externally through presentations, publications, website content, and thought leadership.

🎯 Requirements

• First-principles reasoning: builds a working understanding of an unfamiliar problem from first principles — developing a credible sense of scale, feasibility, and impact potential early enough to make good design decisions before investing significant time.
• Cross-disciplinary range: moves comfortably across unrelated fields (e.g. Energy/Nature/Climate to Learning/Society) and knows how to reach design-credible competence in a new domain fast.
• Education: Masters' degree in a STEM field required. Recent PhD/post-doc encouraged. Candidates with equivalent analytical experience in rigorous, research-driven fields will be considered.
• Exceptional analytical and research experience in related disciplines may substitute for the education requirement.
• Demonstrates basic ability to use dimensional analysis or order-of-magnitude estimates to constrain a new problem.
• Applies research, analytical, and creative problem-solving in fields such as engineering, physical or life sciences, data science, economics, or other rigor-driven domains.
• Strong design and design-thinking skills: problem definition, decomposition into sub-problems, identifying the right problem to solve, and combining creative and analytical methods to find design elements.
• Command of core product management: budgeting, contractual compliance, client relations, and project design, execution, evaluation, and delivery.
• Produces high-quality research, analysis, and design deliverables under compressed timelines without losing rigor or accuracy.
• Runs several active projects at once and reprioritizes quickly when organizational needs shift, keeping a direct supervisor informed when timelines are at risk or scope is evolving.
• Comfortable taking direction from a senior design leader and executing independently within it.
• Knows what to decide alone and what to escalate.
• Communicates clearly and credibly with experts and external stakeholders, orally and in writing, and matches style and standards to the audience.
• Exceptionally strong technical presentation skills: able to adapt depth and framing for expert and non-expert audiences equally.
• Familiar with research and data platforms (e.g. Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus) and AI assisted research functions (e.g. Gemini Deep Research).
• Proficient with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, and quick to pick up new productivity, research, and collaboration tools.

🏖️ Benefits

• Remote-first environment (must live and work in the United States)
• Quarterly company-paid All-Hands meetings in Los Angeles for frequent in-person collaboration
• Employee and dependent medical, dental, and vision options
• A 401(K) program with employer match
• Ample paid time off, including vacation, floating holidays, sick days, and company-paid holidays
• An Employee Assistance Program for confidential, professional support with personal, family, or other challenges
• Employee stipends/reimbursements for cell phone, internet, health & wellbeing, and learning & development
• Generous Paid Parental Leave for all employees welcoming a new child to their family
• One meeting-free block per week and four focus weeks per year to ensure uninterrupted time for strategic projects

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