Principal Product Designer

About the company

Halter is a New Zealand startup that builds solar-powered smart collars for cattle enabling remote herding, virtual fencing and health monitoring.

About this role

ABOUT HALTER At Halter, we’re on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break? No quad bikes, no dogs, no fences. Just a group of cattle walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionizing grazing with Halter. It's changing lives and transforming an industry. People join Halter to do meaningful work. By joining us you’ll be solving challenging problems within a talented team and a culture built for high performance. Our team out-think, out-work and out-care. We’re committed to delivering real change in the world - this isn’t easy, and in truth, we love that it’s hard. We’re backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund https://foundersfund.com, Bessemer Venture Partners https://www.bvp.com/, BOND, https://www.bondcap.com/ DCVC https://www.dcvc.com/, Blackbird https://www.blackbird.vc/, Promus Ventures https://www.promusventures.com/, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures https://www.icehouseventures.co.nz/?utm_term=icehouse%20ventures&utm_campaign=Brand+Keywords&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=4064636360&hsa_cam=16902737884&hsa_grp=134004309485&hsa_ad=592971340272&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-1082530126230&hsa_kw=icehouse%20ventures&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY0J0DepRVFDmjQlAkJPbZuQnLSA5UVzUzOXYiPxkjX-SeVa513_BhkaAr-MEALw_wcB. To find out more, visit our LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/halter-limited & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifeathalter/. ABOUT THE ROLE: How do you represent a living, literally breathing farm in an app and then let someone control it from their pocket? With Halter's solar-powered collars and software, farmers can fence and shift cattle, manage their pasture and the environment more effectively and monitor animal health, all from one app in real time. There is no reference for this, no pattern library, no interaction models to borrow from. We are inventing them. A farm is alive and always moving: animals, pasture, weather, all changing by the minute. Our job is to turn that into something a farmer can read at a glance and act on with total confidence. The stakes are physical and the visual and interaction bar is extremely high, this is a farmer's entire farm in their pocket, it should feel like it. Beautifully crafted and a joy to use, every day, for years. We're looking for a Staff Product Designer to lead the design of a significant area of the product experience at Halter. You'll take on some of our hardest problems and help set the bar for what Halter's product experience should feel like. Design at Halter is high agency and high impact. We help define what we should build and why, we spend real time with farmers, ranchers and graziers in the field, and we shape where Halter goes next. This role is based in our Auckland, New Zealand HQ, relocation and visa assistance is provided. YOU WILL: - Lead the design vision and strategy for a significant area of Halter's farmer-facing product experience. - Own the end-to-end design process, from early discovery and product definition through interaction design, prototyping, visual design, and launch. - Partner closely with Product and Engineering to define what we build, why we build it, and how it should work, identifying opportunities and advocating for the farmer. - Turn complex, ambiguous problem spaces into experiences that feel simple, intuitive, and trustworthy. - Work across multiple product surfaces and teams, balancing the needs of an individual experience with the needs of the broader system. - Use customer insights, real time in the field, data, experimentation, and strong product judgement to inform your work. The best insights come from the paddock, not a dashboard, which usually means gumboots. - Raise the quality of design through strong craft, critique, collaboration, and leadership by example. YOU HAVE: - 8+ years of product design experience, including at least 2 years operating at a senior or lead level. - Exceptional visual and interaction design craft, with a portfolio demonstrating polished, high-quality product experiences. - A strong ownership mentality and the ability to drive work forward without waiting for an open path or defined brief. - Real fluency with AI, both in the design process and as something you can build into the product experience itself. - Strong systems thinking. You can design a great individual experience while understanding how it fits into a larger product ecosystem. - Excellent product judgement and the ability to understand the business, customer, and technical context behind a design problem. - Ability to lead complex, ambiguous projects from initial problem definition through to shipped product. - The ability to communicate a compelling point of view, explain the rationale behind your decisions, and influence stakeholders at multiple levels. OUR BENEFITS: - Delicious snacks and drinks are available for your daily flow. - Healthy body, healthy mind. We're partnered with Southern Cross Health Insurance to support your well-being. - We offer 6 months of fully paid parental leave for primary caregivers, 4 weeks of fully paid secondary caregiver leave and many other parental benefits that support you and your family. - Our personal growth is important. Halter offers an annual $1000 self-development budget to be used for anything that fuels personal growth. - Our time to recharge is valued, we're offered wellness leave and unlimited paid annual leave. - Importantly, we offer an inclusive and attractive remuneration package made up of salary, benefits and an employee stock ownership plan. OUR OFFICE FIRST APPROACH Humans are w