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Senior UX Designer - Map Visualisation
Contract type
Ongoing
Work mode
Remote
Experience
Senior · 5+ years
Job description
Senior UX Designer on TomTom's Map Visualisation team, shaping how 2D and 3D geospatial data is designed, styled and delivered across TomTom's product portfolio. The role is embedded in a cross-functional product team shipping map rendering, map styles and SDKs.
At a glance
- Work mode
- Remote
What you'll do
- Create and refine 2D and 3D map visualisations from concept through production delivery; own the end-to-end cartographic design process from data exploration and sketching through style implementation, QA and iteration across zoom levels, regions and use cases
- Enhance TomTom's core map styles, ensuring consistency, readability and visual quality across platforms, screen densities and global markets; balance aesthetic ambition with rendering performance and data constraints
- Work day-to-day alongside software engineers and product managers building TomTom's map data structures, renderers and SDKs; take part in planning, refinement and reviews, provide design specifications engineers can act on, and review visual output during development and before release
- Help decide what ships, when and at what quality; weigh visual fidelity against render budget, memory and frame rate on automotive and mobile hardware, customer requests against platform consistency, and scope against release dates; reach a decision with the people who own the product, record it and see it through
- Provide detailed input on the data and rendering capabilities needed to achieve design goals; define requirements for internal cartographic authoring tools and identify workflow improvements
- Use AI to shorten the loop from idea to rendered map: generating and editing style-spec JSON, scripting data exploration, and building interactive prototypes on real data; turn what works into shared workflows and help define how AI-generated output is checked for cartographic quality
- Contribute to how the map responds when the request comes from an AI system rather than a tap, for example in GeoAI answers, conversational search or agent-generated routes; work out how the map shows what the AI found, how confident it is and when it is wrong
- Participate in user research, customer conversations and competitive benchmarking; use insights to ground design decisions and advocate for improvements
- Contribute to the Map Visualisation design system - documenting patterns, conventions and cartographic guidelines
What we're looking for
- A track record of shaping product direction from the design seat; set out the options, make the case for one and bring engineering, product and business stakeholders along
- A track record of shipping software as a designer embedded in a product team, ideally on map, location or developer-platform products: SDKs, APIs, map styles or tooling that other teams and companies build on
- A clear understanding of how products move from discovery to release and beyond, including planning, roadmaps and measuring results after launch; know how versioned releases, deprecations and backwards compatibility shape design choices on a platform with external customers
- Hands-on familiarity with how software gets built: backlogs, refinement, estimation, definition of done, Git, pull requests, code reviews, CI/CD, feature flags and release trains
- Sound judgement under constraint; can point to decisions where something was given up to ship and explain why it was right for the product and its users
- Clarity with senior audiences; can turn a complex design problem into a short, well-argued recommendation and own the result
- Comfort with disagreement; challenge a decision with evidence, accept the outcome when it goes the other way and keep the work moving
- Experience contributing to solution design documents, technical specifications and cross-functional planning
- A solid foundation in digital cartography, GIS or geographic information design
- Experience designing multi-zoom digital maps with attention to cartographic conventions, label placement, generalisation and cultural adaptation
- Working proficiency with key mapping technologies and ecosystems: MapLibre, Mapbox GL JS, OpenStreetMap data and tooling, QGIS, ArcGIS, Leaflet, OpenLayers or comparable platforms
- Experience working with diverse spatial datasets - vector tiles, raster tiles, GeoJSON, shapefiles, point clouds or terrain data
- Awareness of cartographic standards across regions and cultures, including sensitive topics such as disputed borders and local place names
- Demonstrated ability to build visually compelling 2D and 3D map experiences - from thematic styling and terrain visualisation to street-level detail
- Hands-on experience designing 3D map content such as buildings, terrain, landmarks and lane-level road geometry, in stylised or realistic form; understand how LOD, lighting, materials and camera pitch affect legibility and performance
- Experience with 3D data formats and pipelines such as glTF and 3D Tiles, and how 3D assets are prepared and optimised for real-time map rendering
- Good understanding of real-time rendering concepts as they apply to maps: style layers, zoom interpolation, data-driven styling, symbol rendering and performance considerations
- Evidence that AI has changed how you work; be ready to show a real example, such as a map style, data visualisation or coded prototype built with AI, and tell us where it let you down
- Sharp judgement of AI output; can spot errors in generated work and know which decisions still need a designer's eye
- Experience turning personal AI use into workflows the team shares, within the limits of confidential data and licensing
- 5+ years of professional experience in UX, product or cartographic design, with most of that time spent inside software product teams
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Cartography, Geography, GIS, UX Design, Computer Science or a related field - or equivalent professional experience
- Ability to build clear, concise prototypes and specification documentation that bridge design and engineering
- Strong visual and graphic design fundamentals - typography, colour theory, hierarchy and layout
- User-centric mindset with a collaborative, low-ego approach to problem-solving
Nice to have
- Experience with game engines or 3D content pipelines (Unity, Unreal Engine, Blender) and their application to geospatial visualisation
- Familiarity with front-end languages and graphics APIs (JavaScript/TypeScript, WebGL, WebGPU, GLSL) or scripting for cartographic automation (Python, PostGIS, Overpass API)
- Experience with map data processing tools and pipelines: Tippecanoe, Tilemaker, osm2pgsql, Mapnik or similar
- Understanding of the automotive, fleet management or logistics industries and their mapping requirements
- Familiarity with emerging trends in spatial computing, AR navigation or digital twins
- Experience contributing to design systems at scale
Your team
Map Visualisation team
A cross-functional team that ships map rendering, map styles and SDKs used by other TomTom products and by the customers who build on the platform.
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About TomTom
TomTom's map is seen by millions of people every day - in dashboards, on phones, and across partner products worldwide.
Key facts
- TomTom's map is seen by millions of people every day - in dashboards, on phones, and across partner products worldwide