Principal Interior Designer - Savannah, GA

Gulfstream Aerospace - Savannah, GA

Full-time - Senior

Savannah, GA

Transportation Equipment Manufacturing

About the position

As a Principal Interior Designer at Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, you will play a pivotal role in creating luxurious and innovative interior designs for our aircraft. This position requires a high level of autonomy, allowing you to produce flexible, comprehensive, and multi-media designs tailored to the specific needs of our customers and prospective clients. You will engage directly with clients, capturing their design requirements and executing concepts that align with their vision while ensuring compliance with FAA and GAC contractual guidelines. Your responsibilities will include overseeing the production of design drawings, material selections, and product development, ensuring timely completion of contracts. You will communicate confidently with high-profile clients, including Chairmen and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, representing the GAC brand with professionalism and instilling confidence in our capabilities. This role demands a strong ability to build and maintain relationships with clients, operations, engineering management, and vendors, ensuring clear communication and execution of client expectations. In addition to your design responsibilities, you will lead a team in maintaining an inclusive environment that respects individual differences and motivates team contributions. You will provide design direction throughout the completion process, ensuring design quality and fidelity in execution. Your expertise in design trends and global cultural influences will be essential in guiding the team and managing outside consultants to deliver a quality interior. You will also be responsible for managing the design budget for each account and troubleshooting design-related issues as they arise. This position requires extensive travel, up to 50%, to meet with clients and oversee projects worldwide. You will maintain current knowledge of FAA regulations related to aircraft interiors and oversee the approval of material finish schedules and other internal documents necessary for accurate project definition. Your role will also involve providing design guidance to studio designers and leading cross-site team efforts for continuous improvement objectives.

Responsibilities

• Communicate with confidence and authority to Chairmen/CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and high net worth individuals to meet business objectives.
• Represent the GAC Brand with professionalism and instill confidence within the customer.
• Act autonomously to communicate comprehensive and detailed concepts that effectively satisfy client requirements throughout the sales and design definition process and delivery.
• Oversee production of design drawings, material selections and concepts, and product development to GAC's engineering and production departments in a timely manner for completion of contracts to ensure that delivery schedules are met with accuracy.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with clients, operations and engineering management, internal shops, and vendors, to keep clear lines of communication and execute on the client's expectations.
• Work collaboratively with customer completions to produce, maintain, and archive the specification and design package with no supervision.
• Exhibit confidence and authority with expertise in design trends and global cultural influences.
• Provide design direction throughout the entire completion process to ensure design quality and fidelity of design execution.
• Maintain current knowledge of all FAA regulations related to aircraft interiors.
• Oversee and approve material finish schedule and other internal documents required for accurate definition.
• Attend all validation meetings including, but not limited to seat validation meetings.
• Provide design guidance through post delivery.
• Effectively manage outside consultants to ensure a quality interior.
• Provide design guidance to studio designers.
• Oversight and creation of client presentations.
• Lead a cross site team effort and/or departmental continuous improvement objective.
• Troubleshoot design related issues with clients and internal departments.
• Effectively manage design budget for each account.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Interior Design or related curriculum required or equivalent combination of education and experience sufficient to successfully perform the essential functions of the job.
• 6 years experience in aircraft interior design or related field.
• Proficiency of design principles, color theory, and textile and leather production techniques required.
• Knowledge of FAA regulations relating to interior finish requirements required.
• Possess working knowledge of Microsoft Office software.

Nice-to-haves

• Luxury interior design experience preferred.
• Foreign language proficiency preferred.