Senior Designer / VTT

Are you a passionate, experienced, designer with a strong understanding of service design? Are you also able make ideas and concepts tangible through visual design and rapid prototyping? Do you want to use your design skills to solve the biggest global problems and help create a more sustainable future? Are you audacious enough to believe you can change the world? 

VTT is one of the leading applied research organisations in Europe. What unites us are curiosity, a passion for learning and a purpose: to solve the biggest challenges of our time and turn them into sustainable growth and well-being. Our cross-disciplinary community of over 2000 brilliant minds is focused on creating impact through science-based innovation. Get to know us further by exploring VTT’s research infra at VTT World. 

We are now looking for a Senior Designer to take an important role in our Design team.

As a Senior Designer, you will have a key role within the VTT Design team. You will collaborate deeply with VTT researchers to make sure that design makes a major contribution to the success of the projects you work on. You will also mentor and guide more junior designers and coach researchers in design skills and methods. You will help us shape our vision and craft, as well as our ways of working and our culture.

VTT´s Design team offers a chance to be part of something special: We are a close-knit design team where the sky is the limit. We are part of introducing new skills, ideas, and methods to VTT and having a wide impact on the organization and in society. Design in research builds strategic insights and enhances research ambition and impact. This is a unique opportunity to grow and expand your design career by working on the biggest global challenges, together with truly world-class researchers, scientists and engineers. Read more about VTT´s strategy  – the path of exponential hope.   

The job is located in Espoo or Tampere. Please note that if located in Tampere, you must be able to flexibly travel to capital area according to project needs.

As Senior Designer concretely you will:

• Bring strategic service design skills to VTT projects, including user and customer studies, mapping and consolidating insights and hypotheses into suitable frameworks, facilitating cocreation and codesign activities, synthesizing and communicating results and next steps
• Contribute visual design, information design, visual communication skills to projects
• Be able to rapidly create lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes with the relevant tools
• Contribute to defining scope, brief, approach and plan for design contribution of projects
• Take full ownership of specific activities within a project; including scoping to meet customer needs, stakeholder management. Cocreating, conceptualizing and productize research finding. Identifying long-term value and impact of research work 
• Help make the value of design visible and understandable at VTT and to our external stakeholders
• Contribute to the growth of our team culture and craft 

Who we are looking for:

For this position, we are looking for a person with genuine interest in science and technology and the role they can play in solving major global challenges. You have a passion for design and the ambition to take your skills into new challenges and contexts. In addition, you are able to absorb, simplify and communicate complex, systemic topics and frameworks on the fly.

• 4+ years of hands-on service design experience within a corporate or agency team
• Strong skills in service design theory and practice and track record of working successfully on strategic service design projects
• Excellent demonstrated cocreation and facilitation abilities in both digital and face-to-face contexts
• Strong skills and previous working experience in several of the following, visual design, information design, visual communication and rapid prototyping methods 
• Understanding of other relevant disciplines such as business design, futures design, Lean Startup, design for sustainability is highly valued, as is experience from working within a high-tech innovation context
• Ability to work with academics in cross-disciplinary teams and systemic challenges
• Ability to relate to stakeholders inside and outside of VTT
• Professional working fluency in English, with Finnish language skills a plus

As a person, we hope that you are:

• Passionate about what we are passionate about – how design and research can create magic together
• Driven to make the world a better place through sustainable, responsible innovation
• Business savvy and keen to bring innovation to life together with our customers
• A natural collaborator and bridge builder, able to work with people with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds
• Highly emotionally intelligent and able to promote psychological safety
• A clear communicator

With VTT, you’ll enjoy:

• Work with a strong purpose. At VTT, you’ll get to use your professional expertise to help solve the greatest challenges of our time through science and innovation. Our research agenda is dedicated to creating solving systemic and technological challenges, such as reaching carbon neutrality and creating superior digital systems. At VTT, you’ll get to do your part in driving this meaningful change through your own professional skills. 
• An inspiring community. VTT houses all the cutting-edge fields of innovation from quantum technology to synthetic biology under one roof. As a professional at VTT, you’ll get to witness and influence the future of science and technology as it happens. 
• Career and learning opportunities. As a scientific expert organisation, we put a lot of emphasis on learning and development and support our people in reaching their full potential. People tend to stay at VTT for more than 10 years, as we offer opportunities to develop and grow into new responsibilities. If you’re curious, ambitious and willing to learn, VTT is the place to take your career to the next level.
• Support for your well-being. Our people are our main asset, so we take good care of them. We aim to nurture great team spirit and leadership and offer versatile well-being services to enable a good work–life balance. On top of 6 weeks of paid holidays we offer exercise and culture benefits, hobby clubs, and voluntary well-being services such as meditation programs and training on cognitive ergonomic.
• The tools to do the job. We provide our designers with design industry standard hardware and software, including Apple computers, Adobe Creative Cloud, Miro. Other tools such as InVision, Sketch, Figma etc. as needed.

Apply now and join our community of brilliant minds!

Please send your CV and application with your salary request via our recruitment system as soon as possible but at the latest by 28 February 2022. We will process applications as they come in, and fill in the position as soon as we find the right candidate.

Interested and want to know more?

For further information, please contact Niall Shakeshaft, Vice President, Head of Design on +358 40 631 3940 during 16th of Feb at 13.00-14.00 and 17th of Feb at 11.00-12.00.

We look forward to hearing from you!Apply between 7 February 2022 and 28 February 2022 23:59 (Europe/Helsinki)Employment type: Full-time, Permanent (hybrid work)

VTT

VTT is a visionary research, development and innovation partner. We drive sustainable growth and tackle the biggest global challenges of our time and turn them into growth opportunities. We go beyond the obvious to help the society and companies to grow through technological innovations. We have over 75 years of experience of top-level research and science-based results. VTT´s turnover and other operating income is 258 M€. VTT is at the sweet spot where innovation and business come together.

VTT – beyond the obvious.