The Role
At Notpla, we create disappearing packaging carefully engineered for a healthy planet. Founded on the belief that nature knows best, we’re an innovative, ideas and action-oriented scale-up developing and manufacturing packaging solutions from seaweed and plants that disappear naturally. We are currently looking to recruit a Product Designer to join the creative hub of Notpla.
At Notpla, we strongly believe in our mission and our employees' ability to help us achieve our goals. We encourage everyone who joins us to develop and grow and take responsibility for your domain without micromanagement. Our objective is to foster a fantastic business culture that is reflected in our working policies and environment.
Besides offering exciting roles and a great working environment, Notpla provides competitive salaries, the potential for EMI Share Options, a zero-carbon pension scheme, discounts with local businesses, and subsidised social activities. Our flexible working policy allows you to work at your own pace.
We are a social business with regular clubs and events, and we are proud of how our diverse workplace has created a community that is all pushing towards the common goal of making plastic disappear.
Our creative engine room: the design team is responsible for generating innovative ideas that drive our product capabilities forward. It’s a dynamic group of creatives committed to embedding our values into everything we do. The team is primarily divided into product-specific sections but works collaboratively to design and create unique solutions.
Your profile
We are looking for an inventive forward thinker; ready to spearhead novel product propositions using Notpla biomaterials. You will be capable of bringing your designs to life through crafting compelling visual and verbal narratives.
You will need to be able to thrive in open briefs, embody a "thinking through making" mentality, and possess a keen eye for design excellence. You will need organisational skills that are second to none, allowing you to navigate working on diverse projects with ease. You will need to come from a product design background and will ideally have experience in creating novel, unique and practical physical products. As well as the above your day-to-day responsibilities will include:
Concept Development: Individually and collaboratively with cross-functional teams to brainstorm, connect the dots and create innovative packaging concepts that create new value and align with Notpla’s values and strategic goals. You are a creative problem solver and proactively propose novel directions and imaginative ideas.
Physical Designs: Develop functional and visually compelling design prototypes and final product propositions to demonstrate the feasibility and desirability of new product ideas. This may involve various novel materials and making processes. and include physical prototypes as well as limited digital mock-ups.
Biomaterial Development: You innovate and create value not only at a product level but also on a material level. You work individually, as well as closely with the research team, to fast-track research through creative problem-solving and a rapid prototyping mentality. Creating novel biomaterial samples and testing material properties will be part of your job.
Visual Storytelling: Create engaging visual assets, including diagrams, illustrations, photography, and moving image, to convey the vision and potential of new products. Develop inspiring presentations and materials for internal and external stakeholders in a timely matter.
Building and nurturing relationships: You’ll be pitching and presenting to brands (among others) together with other team members, and think of ways to nurture and develop strong external relationships with stakeholders in the supply chain as well as commercial partnerships to bring concepts to reality.
Design Excellence: Ensure design work meets the highest quality possible in the given timeframe and creates value. Considering the designs from a holistic point of view reviewing its, aesthetic quality, functionality, usability/user experience, end-of-life and producibility. Continuously push the quality, refine and iterate on designs based on feedback and new insights.
Life-Centred Approach: Apply design thinking principles to empathise with users (businesses and end-users), understand their needs, and translate insights into innovative product solutions. You’ll be conducting various tests to validate product propositions from a functional, user and usability point of view and collect feedback for this.
Inspiration and Market/Design Research: You have a natural curiosity and proactively seek inspiration and references from wide-ranging areas. Stay up-to-date with industry trends, emerging technologies, and competitive products to inform and inspire your design process.
Cross-functional collaboration: You’ll be working closely with researchers, business development managers, designers, and other team members to bring biomaterial solutions into the real world.
Prototyping Tools: Utilise a range of design and prototyping software and hardware, staying proficient in the latest tools and technologies.
If the above sounds like something you can see yourself doing, then please apply with a CV, portfolio (pdf or website) and cover letter and someone from our recruitment team will be in touch.
Notpla Limited takes inclusion and diversity seriously. It is important for us that we live by our values and our policies outline how – We take care and We work better together.
About us
We’re hard to define because what we’re doing hasn’t been done before.
Notpla is a sustainable packaging start-up founded in 2014. A combination of designers, chemists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. We create advanced packaging solutions made from seaweed and other natural materials as an alternative to single-use plastic.
We received multiple awards and grants from Innovate UK and the Ellen Macarthur Foundation for our innovative product “Ooho” – an edible and fully biodegradable sachet. Our portfolio has now extended with multiple innovation solutions.
We're committed to creating a working environment where every member of our team can bring their full self to work regardless of their race, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability or age.
