Lead Industrial Designer, Exterior

The surface is the easy part. Where the panels meet, and how they come apart, is yours.

About Chip

Chip is the first mass-market American robot. He just happens to be your car.

Chip is building a new category of vehicle. Most cars are engineered for highway speeds and long-distance range. The reality is that 60% of daily trips are under 6 miles. Chip is built for those trips: fully electric, street-legal on roads up to 35 mph, 100+ mile range, and made to fit the way people actually move through their neighborhoods.

We're also launching Chip Go! , a remote-driving service that keeps your vehicle moving when you're not inside it. Say the word and he'll go off to park himself, run an errand, get cleaned, or come get you and the family. Rolling out regionally.

We launched publicly in July 2026 and reservations are open nationally.

The role

Chip is designed to be modular and customizable at home. One platform, and many shapes it can take on top of it. Most of what makes a Chip look like somebody's Chip bolts on after the body is done.

The surfaces are the easy part. They come out of Blender as subdivision models and they're good. The hard part is everything between them: where one panel meets the next, how a body part locates and fastens, how an accessory rail carries a load without wrecking the line. You'll set the standards and elevate the quality.

You'll also run the exterior CAD team. Right now that's outside surfacers converting Blender to NURBS for engineering. Over time it's your own hires. Either way you decide who's good, what done looks like, and whether a corner was solved or just closed.

You'll report to the VP, Vehicle Design and the C-suite, and work alongside the engineering team.

The pipeline

Design happens in Blender, in subdivision surfaces, because iteration is fast and the same model feeds animation, the configurator, and marketing. Engineering works in Onshape. Between the two sits the conversion to NURBS, done today by outside vendors and reviewed by you. The A-surfaces have to hold their softness through that conversion or the design is gone.

What you'll do

• Own the exterior interfaces. Every seam, flange, and fixing where one panel meets another, from the split line to the bolt behind it.
• Design the kit logic. How body kit parts and accessories locate, fasten, and come off again, so a Chip can change over a weekend without a body shop.
• Define the accessory architecture. The datums, rails, and mounting points future accessories attach to, so we stop designing a new interface every time we design a new part.
• Run the exterior CAD team. Brief the surfacers, review the patch layouts, accept the work or send it back. Outside vendors today, your own people as we grow.
• Hold the surface through conversion. The Sub-D model is the design intent. You make sure the NURBS that reaches engineering still is.
• Live in the seam between design and engineering. You know what a 2 mm wall does to a corner before the solid model tells you.
• Take parts to tool-ready. Draft angles, parting lines, radii that mould, and gaps that assemble.
• Keep the line. When engineering needs a change, you find the answer that keeps the design whole, and you know when to give ground.

What you'll need

• Seven or more years in industrial or automotive exterior design, with parts you designed on products or vehicles that shipped.
• You've solved interfaces, not just surfaces. Split lines, flush and gap, fixings, tolerance stack-ups, and what happens to a part once it's thickened and moulded.
• You can build A-surfaces yourself in SolidWorks, Fusion, CATIA, or Alias.
• Fluent in Sub-D and NURBS, and honest about the difference. You can read a patch layout and say whether it was designed or patched.
• You've led CAD hands. Briefed them, reviewed their work, sent it back, and made the final call.
• Proactive. You do the work where and when it's needed, without waiting to be asked.
• Comfortable in the engineering conversation. You can read a section, argue a datum, and lose gracefully when the physics wins.
• Blender, or the will to work in it. It's where design lives here.
• Based in Miami, where the vehicles are.

Almost nobody arrives strong on both the surface and the interface. Tell us which one you're better at and which you'd be picking up, and we'll take that seriously.

Bonus points

• Injection moulding, RIM, or composite panel design.
• Vacuum forming.
• CMF. You've specified color, material, and finish for exterior parts and know what a paint system or a molded-in color does to a surface you designed.
• Alias, ICEM, or a Class-A surfacing background.
• Onshape.
• Low-volume vehicle programs, where you couldn't hide behind a big team.
• Product design with moving parts: hinges, latches, mechanisms, anything that still has to work after the thousandth cycle.
• You've shipped from a company with fewer than 50 people.

What success looks like

• An accessory attaches to a Chip the first time it's mounted.
• A panel comes off and goes back on and the gap is the same.
• Engineering thickens a surface and nothing fails.
• The Sub-D and the NURBS are the same design.
• The CAD team knows what good looks like without asking you.

Compensation and benefits

• $110,000 to $150,000, depending on experience.
• Equity in Chip.
• Eligible for our company healthcare plan.