Website: https://zapier.com
Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
We're looking for a Sr. Design Director to manage and scale our design organization at Zapier. Are you excited to scale a user-centered UX design culture in a 100% remote company? Then keep reading!
About you
You've managed or scaled design organizations at least on the order of 15 to 30 people. Specifically, you're able to effectively manage design work through at least one layer of management. And have experience to suggest how to structure a growing design team.
You've scaled a product across the chasm and have seen both sides of it. You can share anecdotes and stories about designing for both types of users (early adopters and early majority) and have successfully navigated a team or organization through the transition.
You are comfortable owning the user experience. You've owned the user experience of significant products, helping design teams prioritize and push for smart decisions that positively impact the user experience across the product.
You are a skilled mentor and coach. You realize the best way to grow a team is by helping them to grow themselves. You're able to effectively share your experience and provide a clear framework for growth.
You are a skilled UX and UI designer. We don't expect you to create designs on a regular basis, but you've done it for years and have lots of stories and advice to share based on prior experience. You can inspire a team, even when delivering design critique, based on your past experience.
You are a skilled researcher. You'll manage our research team who do both foundational and UX validation-style research. You know how to get the most out of a research team -- how research can influence roadmaps, strategy, and decision making -- based on your past experience. You can bridge qualitative and quantitative research to help drive decision making within the broader organization.
You are product, business, and customer focused. You are able to relate to our customers and partners to provide and translate business vision into user experience vision in a simple and clear manner.
You're a skilled written communicator. Zapier is a 100% remote team and writing is our primary means of communication. You'll use written summaries and reports to communicate vision, strategy, plans, findings, and results to the engineering and full Zapier team.
You're a champion for doing things efficiently. At Zapier, the work you do will have a disproportionate impact on the business. We believe in systems and processes that let us scale our impact to be larger than ourselves.
Things You Might Do
Zapier is a small, fast-paced company, so you'll get experience with a little bit of everything. That said, here are some things you'll probably do:
- Hold weekly one-on-ones with your direct reports. Today, the entire design team is 1 design manager, 4 UX researchers, and 10 product designers
- Build rapport with each member of the product design team and work hard to help them level up their skills
- Lead hiring and onboarding for new product designers to support our staffing roadmap
- Collaborate across functions to help set roadmaps that will achieve business goals through design
- Advocate for and teach product design skills across the organization. Find ways to involve non-designers in the product design process through design sprints and other creative means.
- Drive our Zapier design standards and basic design system forward
- Provide feedback on product design solutions through wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes
- Participate in user research and other experiments to inform design decisions
- Give, seek, and receive thoughtful critical feedback
- Give back to the community via open source, blog posts, and sharing design team work
- Actively recruit, onboard and train new product designers at Zapier
- As a part of Zapier's all-hands philosophy, help customers via support to ensure they have the best experience possible
About Zapier
For the past six years, Zapier has been helping people across the world automate the boring and tedious parts of their job. We do that by helping everyone connect the web applications they already use and love.
We believe that there are jobs a computer is best at doing and that there are jobs a human is best at doing. We want to empower businesses to create processes and systems that let computers do what they are best at doing and let humans do what they are best at doing.
We believe that with the right tools, you can have big impact with less hassle.
We believe in small teams. Small teams are fast and nimble. Small teams mean less bureaucracy and less management and more getting things done.
We believe in a safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment. All teammates at Zapier agree to a code of conduct.
The Whole Package
Location: Remote
Our team of 180+ is distributed because it lets us work with the best people. You don't have to be located in the USA either. Some team members live in the United Kingdom, Thailand, India, Nigeria, Taiwan, Guatemala, New Zealand, Australia, and more! You just need the skills and drive to succeed in this role and the ability to work from anywhere.
Compensation:
- Competitive salary (we don't use remote as an excuse to pay less)
- Great healthcare + dental + vision coverage*
- Retirement plan with 4% company match*
- Profit sharing
- 2 annual company retreats to awesome places
- 14 weeks paid leave for new parents of biological or adopted children
- Pick your own equipment. We'll set you up with whatever Apple laptop + monitor combo you want plus any software you need.
- Unlimited vacation policy. Plus we require you to take at least 2 weeks off each year. We see most employees take 4-5 weeks off per year. This isn't a vague policy where unlimited vacation means no vacation.
- Work with awesome companies around the world. We partner with great software companies all over the world and you'll constantly get to interact with people from these great companies
Zapier is an equal opportunity employer. We're excited to work with talented and empathetic people no matter their race, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, or age. Our code of conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be, and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base.
CLICK HERE TO APPLY
Source: Remote Global, Zapier
