Designing tools to build the machines of tomorrow

‍Russ Parrish is the Head of Design at Sift, where he leads product and brand execution for tools that help hardware engineers test, build, and operate advanced hardware. Over the last 15 years, he’s worked across aerospace, robotics, and AI, including roles at SpaceX, Intuitive Surgical, and IBM. Russ’s design work has earned Best in Show recognition from International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), Red Dot, Good Design Awards and the Silicon Valley UX Awards, but he’s most proud of building mission critical tools for complex and demanding work environments, either if that’s an operating room or a spaceship. 

Putting People on Mars

One night, I was watching a Kurzgesagt video about colonizing Mars with my nine-year-old daughter, Jane. She proudly describes herself as an “astronaut princess.” When the video ended, she turned to me and said she wished she’d been born later, so she could visit Mars one day.

Holding back tears, I told her, “Dad’s new job at Sift is helping bring that future closer, so maybe you will.”

Sift is building tools that are essential for this new hard-tech revolution. Advanced hardware now produces billions of data points, but that volume of information can actually slow progress down. Engineers often spend more time decoding what the data means than solving the actual problem.

Sift is changing that. We’re developing tools that help engineers deeply understand their hardware’s data across testing and development, production, and operations. If we do our job right, we’ll accelerate the pace of innovation. That means my daughter might live in a world where interplanetary travel is real, clean energy is abundant, and peace and stability is maintained.

Scrappy Isn’t Crappy

At SpaceX, there was a poster on the wall that read, “Scrappy isn’t crappy.” That mindset stuck with me. Things don’t need to be perfect to get started, especially when you’re working through ambiguity. The key is to take the first step, even if it’s messy, and keep iterating. That’s how you eventually land rockets on drone ships or catch them out of the sky.

I carried this ethos with me to Intuitive, where I was a lead Interaction Designer for seven years, working on the Da Vinci 5 surgical robot. That project became the crowning achievement of my career, especially knowing it has been used by skilled surgeons to help close friends and family members.

Through that experience, I saw firsthand the scale of effort it takes to build complex technology: a true army of engineers, testers, and designers. But I also realized that not every builder has access to those kinds of resources. 

Design That Moves Us Forward

Toward the end of my time at Intuitive, I started hearing from recruiters at major Silicon Valley tech companies. Curious, I went through a few interview processes, sharing my story and work. One recruiter surprised me by saying, “Honestly, you’d be bored here.”

At first, I was shocked. These were the companies I had once viewed as the pinnacle of innovation. But I realized they were right. What excites me most isn’t refining solved problems, it’s tackling the ones no one’s cracked yet. I want to work on challenges that move science and technology forward.

That’s what led me to Sift.

I’ve been following the company since Karthik and Austin founded it, two former teammates from the SpaceX Flight Software team. I admired their courage in leaving a great job to start something new. One evening, Karthik and I had dinner in the Bay Area. His optimism and clarity of vision for Sift blew me away. We talked about design, and how it shapes not just products, but company culture, making the complex simple.

That conversation sealed it for me: becoming Head of Design at Sift was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The right people, at the right moment, with the right mission.

Building a Team

I’m a builder. I like to create things. My home office is a workbench in the garage, a mix of Milwaukee tools and Leica cameras, a perfect combination of form and function, with a little sawdust.

Now, I’m building a design team at Sift. And I’m looking for people who love solving difficult problems in beautiful, meaningful ways.

I want designers who ask better questions than I do. People who are willing to suit up in a cleanroom to observe users. Designers who can use their craft to tell compelling stories, creating a cult-like enthusiasm from those who use our tools and who are scrappy enough to thrive in the fast-paced, ambiguous world of a startup.

If this quote from Carl Sagan resonates with you, and you’re looking for your next adventure, we should talk.

“For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood — drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.”

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Interested in joining Sift? Check out the open positions.