Job Description

About The Company And The Team

At Microsoft, we have bold ambitions: Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To accomplish this, the Mixed Reality Design and UX Research team is looking for divergent thinkers and makers who explore and learn by making, obsess over every degree, pixel, word, and sound wave, and bring their curiosity and passion to re-imaging the relationship between people and technology. In 2015, we launched HoloLens, the world’s first spatial computing device and platform, with the mission of empowering people to transform their world. In 2020, we continue that journey with the core belief that mixed reality can bring people closer and help them go further.

About The Role

Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Design and UX Research team is looking for a customer-focused technical designer with the curiosity, creativity, empathy, and engineering passion to define the spatial future of computing.

As a Technical Designer, you will be focused on bringing our core product experience to life through prototypes, iteration, validation, and final production. You will work with our interdisciplinary team to turn customer insights into transformative experiences and the design patterns that unify Microsoft’s mixed reality software, hardware, and services. You’ll explore and demonstrate the path ahead for Microsoft’s MR products with both quick demos and, later, highly refined MR experiences.

In this role, you will combine the technical expertise of a game engineer with the focus of an interaction designer and the rapid approach of a prototyper. You will bring your unique perspective to our insights-based process as we seek new ways that technology and our platform can empower people and groups to transform the world. You’ll lead by making in our highly collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment, where we test early, test often, and tirelessly push for the best. You’ll bring your creative and technical expertise to be a bridge between design and engineering, and utilize your hands-on skills to develop the design intent through prototyping and iterative refinement, all the way from concept to completion. There is no bigger opportunity than defining the foundation of mixed reality computing, communication, and creativity with our team, and we cannot wait to see what you will bring!

Responsibilities

As a Technical Designer you will have the following responsibilities:

• Collaborate with product design, user research, and engineering to create interactive prototypes that explore innovative design concepts, act as reference for customer research, and bring ideas from pre-production to production.
• Seek inclusive and divergent feedback from peers and leads to iteratively improve product experience
• Actively bridge design and engineering, advising design teams on engineering constraints and advising engineering teams on design intent and capturing the desired feel of an experience
• Contribute to broad, shared understanding of experiential and technical factors across all disciplines.
• Collaborate across disciplines to solve deep experiential and technical problems and drive incredible final experiences
• Stay on top of the latest insights and design practices across software, web, gaming, and AR/VR industries
• Be a positive and creative force in the team
  
  

Qualifications

Required:

• 5+ years of experience as a front-end engineer or creative technologist prototyping UX or building shipping experiences in Unity or an equivalent game engine (web, mobile, PC, gaming, or other)
• Front-end development skills with a focus on interaction design, animation, performance, or immersive experiences
• Experience prototyping for MR experiences.
• Degree in computer science, 3D design, interaction, or equivalent industry experience
• Expert-level experience with game engines such as Unity or Unreal
• Experience with modern app and web UI frameworks
• Experience building or consuming APIs and familiarity with web and cloud infrastructure.
• A good understanding of interaction and user experience design best practices and workflows.
• Track record of collaboration
• Fundamental understanding of Interaction Design, 3D design, technical art, and gameplay.
• Working knowledge of some of the following tools: Maya, Houdini, Blender, Adobe Creative Suite
• Working knowledge of C# and optionally Java, Kotlin, Python, C++
• Create rapid prototypes to demonstrate the functionality of your design.
  
  

Preferred

• Designed a User Interface in a Virtual or Augmented Reality product that has shipped
• Motion, 3D design, or technical art skills: you bring a refined aesthetic sense to your experiences
• Experience transforming raw input from sensors into enjoyable experiences
• Product design skills: you translate user needs and customer insights into interaction and UD design.
• Higher Degree (Masters, Ph.D., etc) in computer science, 3D design or HCI
  

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.