Senior Futures Design Strategist (US Remote)

Company Overview

At Motorola Solutions, we believe that everything starts with our people. We’re a global close-knit community, united by the relentless pursuit to help keep people safer everywhere. We build and connect technologies to help protect people, property and places. Our solutions foster the collaboration that’s critical for safer communities, safer schools, safer hospitals, safer businesses, and ultimately, safer nations. Connect with a career that matters, and help us build a safer future.

Department Overview

At Motorola Solutions, we build technologies that help people be their best in the moments that matter. Our products support people working in complex, high-stakes environments — from public safety and emergency communications to enterprise security.

Understanding the people who use these technologies, the environments they work within and the challenges they face is fundamental to building products that are useful, trustworthy and effective.

The Futures Insights Team is Motorola Solutions’ research-led futures and strategic foresight pod, embedded within the broader UX Research organization. Our team is primarily split across the United States and United Kingdom. Our work sits between user experience research, strategic foresight, design, and business strategy. We partner across multiple functions while maintaining enough independence to challenge existing assumptions and investigate opportunities that do not yet fit neatly within today’s organizational boundaries.

We approach futuring/futures as a space that is explored and co-created rather than predicted. We seek direction in uncertainty, contradiction, edge cases and emerging behaviours – as well as in established customer needs. The aim is ultimately to create strategic option value for Motorola Solutions: making uncertain futures more intelligible and identifying high-leverage opportunities earlier.

Job Description

About the team

The Futures Insights Team is Motorola Solutions’ research-led futures and strategic foresight team, part of the broader UX Research organization, with members across the US and UK. Our work sits where user research, strategic foresight, design and business strategy meet. We partner across functions but stay independent enough to challenge assumptions and look into opportunities that don’t yet fit within today’s organizational boundaries. We see the future as something to explore and co-create, not predict. We look for direction in uncertainty, contradiction, edge cases and emerging behaviors, as well as in established customer needs. The goal is to create strategic option value: making uncertain futures easier to understand and spotting high-leverage opportunities earlier.

About the role

As a Senior Futures Design Strategist, you’ll help shape Horizon 3 (5–10+ year) product opportunities and make sure they lead somewhere. This role is for someone who can dream and be pragmatic. You’ll make futures tangible through artifacts, interfaces and narratives that let users and leaders step inside them. Then you’ll make them actionable by turning them into value propositions, opportunity briefs and investment choices the business can act on. As the team’s main design-focused individual contributor, you’ll own the bridge between our futures work and the teams who explore and build. That means making sure every promising concept has a credible next step and a clear owner. You might call yourself a design strategist, innovation strategist, speculative designer or innovation consultant. Whatever the title, we want to hear from you if you’ve made the future tangible, built the case around it, and helped senior leaders decide where to place their bets, and just as importantly, where not to.

Core Responsibilities

• Speculative Prototyping & Design Fiction: Create tangible future-state artifacts (mock interfaces, speculative journey maps, world-building narratives) that let users and stakeholders step into, critique, and pressure-test 5–10+ year concepts before investment is committed.
• Commercial Opportunity Framing: Translate abstract futures into viable business opportunities by defining value propositions, target users, business models, competitive positioning, and the key assumptions that must hold true, along with why it matters to Motorola Solutions now.
• Activation & Handover: Scope Strategic Opportunity Briefs, run activation workshops, and transition validated concepts to downstream R&D, product, and incubation teams, so each promising concept leaves with a well-scoped next step and a clear owner.
• Executive Influence & Delivery: Present visually compelling strategic options, trade-offs, and risks to C-suite and senior leaders, bringing a clear point of view on which futures to invest in, monitor, or set aside.
• Foresight Research & Synthesis: Partner with researchers to ground concepts in human needs and in market and technology context. Contribute to AI-assisted signal scanning and facilitate foresight methods (STEEP, CLA, Delphi) to turn weak signals into design hypotheses.
• Practice Multiplier: Mentor peers, raise the quality of our experiential design, and help show how futures work creates strategic option value across the company.

Qualifications

• Experience: 5+ years in design strategy, innovation strategy, speculative design, strategic foresight, or innovation consulting.
• Portfolio Evidence: Tangible future artifacts and frameworks grounded in human-centered research, with evidence of how that work moved past the presentation into funded exploration, product roadmaps, pilots, or new ventures.
• Speculative Craft: Deep expertise in speculative design, design fiction, and scenario building, with exceptional visual craft (Figma, FigJam, physical prototyping, video narrative).
• Commercial Fluency: Working fluency in how businesses create and capture value, including business model design, market and competitive dynamics, and risk/return. You don’t need an MBA, but you should be able to hold your own in a business review.
• Methodological Breadth: Practical command of foresight and research methods (scenario planning, backcasting, STEEP, causal layered analysis, Delphi).
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Proven ability to guide R&D, product, and design teams through futures work without direct authority.
• Travel & Time Zones: Willingness to travel for in-person research when needed and to collaborate across US and European time zones.

Preferred

• Education: Advanced degree (Master’s or Ph.D.) or equivalent professional expertise in Design Futures, Strategic Foresight, HCI, Anthropology, Systems Design, or a related field.
• Innovation Practice: Experience in a design-led consultancy, corporate innovation or new ventures group, or incubation setting.
• AI-Assisted Foresight: Experience using or building AI tools for signal scanning, trend tracking, and synthesizing unstructured data.
• Domain Adaptability: Track record researching complex socio-technical systems (e.g., mobility, health, organizational analysis); public safety, government, or enterprise security experience is a plus.

Target Base Salary Range: $135,000 USD - $150,000 USD

Consistent with Motorola Solutions values and applicable law, we provide the following information to promote pay transparency and equity. Pay within this range varies and depends on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The actual offer will be based on the individual candidate.

Note: Candidate can reside anywhere in the US.

#LI-MP2

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Basic Requirements

• Bachelors degree with 5+ years in UX research or design strategy
• AND 3+ years in design strategy, speculative design, innovation strategy, or strategic foresight within a product strategy team, consultancy, or incubation setting.
  

Travel Requirements

10-25%

Relocation Provided

None

Position Type

Experienced

Referral Payment Plan

Yes

Our U.S. Benefits include:

• Incentive Bonus Plans

• Medical, Dental, Vision benefits

• 401K with Company Match

• 10 Paid Holidays

• Generous Paid Time Off Packages

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

• Paid Parental & Family Leave

• and more!

EEO Statement

Motorola Solutions is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally-protected characteristic. 

We are proud of our people-first and community-focused culture, empowering every Motorolan to be their most authentic self and to do their best work to deliver on the promise of a safer world. If you’d like to join our team but feel that you don’t quite meet all of the preferred skills, we’d still love to hear why you think you’d be a great addition to our team.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruiting experience for candidates with disabilities, or other physical or mental health conditions. To request an accommodation, please complete this Reasonable Accommodations Form so we can assist you.