Creative Technologist

Arena is hiring for a Creative Technologist to bring AI to life with our team. 

Who we are:

• Our name is inspired by Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Citizenship in a Republic’ speech, which pays homage to the ‘(hu)man in the Arena’. To us, entering the Arena means committing oneself fully and accepting the risk of failure in the pursuit of an audacious, worthy cause.
• We’re a close-knit tribe of scientists and builders exploring the boundaries of how artificial intelligence can benefit humanity. If you share our passion for delving deep into real-world problems and solving them with fully autonomous AI, join us in the Arena.

What we do:

• Arena empowers businesses across industries to make high frequency, critical path decisions fully autonomous. Our products have helped some of the world’s largest CPG and manufacturing companies transform their sales and supply chains into increasingly autonomous, self-learning systems — unlocking efficiencies and resulting in better, more affordable consumer experiences. 
• Arena knows that autonomy can help organizations tackle much more, from delivering critical goods and services more affordably, sustainably, and equitably to the world, to reducing green premiums on renewable energy to compete more effectively with fossil fuels.

About the role:

Our mission is to bring to life delightful, easy-to-use, and high value experiences for our customers – while expanding and reframing what UX for AI  can  be. Creative Technologists at Arena are design-and-animation-minded engineers with a focus on crafting exceptional experiences. You’ll partner with internal stakeholders across Arena to productize novel ML models and bring our solutions to life.

We’re looking for people with “Zero to One” ability - you can design, craft, and prototype thoughtful (and working) UX that communicate your product ideas at the right level of fidelity to internal and external stakeholders. You’ll have enough engineering experience to be able to own the creation, implementation, and deployment of new React-based UX features across a variety of products.

How you will contribute:

Internally:

• You will design, prototype, and implement new product features in production.
• You will rapidly build and iterate on high quality, functional prototypes that express design intent, using the best and most appropriate tools and techniques for the task at the right level of fidelity.
• You will partner with engineers to ensure that innovative AI techniques and technologies translate into scalable tools, services, and customer experiences.
• You will push the bar higher for animation, motion, and craft in AI experiences.

With Customers:

• You will work closely with real enterprise users in many different countries, as well as Arena engineers and scientists to define what human-computer interaction looks like in an age of active learning AI.

Requirements:

• Working full time in our office in NYC
• An available online portfolio
• A minimum of 6 years of post-grad experience
• Experience building software (or prototypes for software) that has been successfully delivered to enterprise customers
• Solid React Development experience - you know how and when to use different tools, techniques, and patterns - as well as when to break them.
• You are competent with Typescript - you can define types, debug typescript issues, and enforce type-safety in code.
• Solid CSS knowledge - (you know how to center a div, amongst other things) using flexbox, grid, margins, etc without looking it up. You’ve got experience with CSS tooling and frameworks like SASS, Tailwind, or Styled Components.
• UX Motion experience - you have a preferred motion library, and experience with imperative and reactive animation, transitions, and optimizing animation for performance. (framer motion, gsap, etc)
• You can design a UI, and present it thoughtfully to stakeholders
• You’re a pro at Figma, and know other tools like Framer, Principle, etc.
• You’ve worked in environments where continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are used

It would be great if you have:

• A sense of joy, humor, and whimsy when thinking about or discussing UX.
• Motion graphics experience (After Effects, various 3D software experience)
• Experience developing rich applications with Three.js and D3.js
• Significant understanding of browser compatibility
• Experience and ability to identify and resolve Web animation / motion / visual performance and scalability issues
• Knowledge of web security best practices
• Interest and enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Passion for good engineering, clean code, and scalability
• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly at all levels, whether that be engaging deeply on a topic with other engineers or sharing key insights with business stakeholders
• Strong customer focus with ability to translate user requirements into good design

You will thrive in this role if:

To be successful in this role, you’ll apply your deep technical expertise to advancing design and product concepts through software. You’ll have demonstrated experience taking business goals, turning them into inspiring world-class designs, while prototyping new ideas, and deploying new interactive experiences into production.

• You aren’t content with the status quo, and feel that “anything can be beautiful”
• You can collaborate fluidly with customers, design leads, product leads, and engineering teams
• You care about creative story-telling through design / ux.
• You can concept, design, and prototype UX at a high level
• You have passion for the details and care about making things look beautiful, and work in a beautiful way
• You care about, you try to, and often do… get it right the first time
• You don’t think that the future of AI interfaces will be tables, dropdowns, and charts
• “No job is too big, or too small”
• You care about the meta, but can zoom into the details.

Benefits:

• 99% of the monthly premium for Aetna medical insurance, plus vision and dental coverage
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Unlimited PTO
• Lunch every day from local restaurants via Sharebite
• Laptop and monitor provided

The base salary range for this position is $135,000 - $200,000 yr. However, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. In addition to base salary, we also offer competitive equity and benefits packages.