Lead Product Designer

• We are looking for an experienced, process-minded designer that can work independently and help set UX direction on cross-functional product teams.
• An ideal candidate for this contract excels in design thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and possesses a firm understanding of industry best practices in native mobile and mobile-first web experiences.
• They are organized, self-driven, and invested in mentoring and guiding the junior designers on their product teams.
• Previous experience in eCommerce / working in a Lead Product Designer capacity is a huge plus!

Responsibilities:

• Collaborating and communicating professionally with internal and cross-functional teams
• Works well with cross-disciplinary teams, including FEWD, to create functional and engaging product experiences
• Proficient in communicating direction, design principles, and design specifications
• Fosters a highly collaborative design process and is trusted by their team to talk through both scope and technical challenges and negotiate thoughtful outcomes.
• Takes a leadership role in cross-discipline meetings, bringing a design voice to the conversations and building trust between design teams and other disciplines.
• Creating experience maps, user scenarios, comps, and flows
• Designs user experiences from low-fidelity sketches to high-fidelity prototypes
• Creates rapid prototypes to validate design concepts
• Developing processes and approaches to solving design problems
• Coordinates multi-disciplinary project teams
• Communicates design considerations to different audiences, including developers, management, and leadership
• Uses known methods and anticipates problems to strategize design solutions that meet and exceed business objectives
• Working well with cross-disciplinary teams
• Works closely with various teams to gain user insights, identify opportunities, validate concepts, and socialize ideas across the team
• Collaborates with cross functional teams, including FEWD, to create functional and engaging product experiences.
• Able to positively influence partners and stakeholders, both directly and indirectly.
• Presenting work to cross-functional teams and leadership
• Demonstrates experience executing design practices within Agile software development
• Collaborates with Project Owners and Business Analysts to build and maintain a product backlog
• Works closely with partners on the crafting of requirements and user stories.
• Understands and considers business goals into their design decisions/solutions.

Requirements

• 8+ years hands-on designing product experiences or general UX design
• Previous experience working on a cross-functional product team in an Agile environment
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience
• Experts in navigating and leveraging a heavily cross-functional environment
• 1+ years mentoring other designers
• Bonus Qualifications
• Understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other front-end code frameworks
• Experience designing native mobile apps
• Experience in ecommerce
• Working knowledge of design research methodologies

Qualifications:

• Leads are established and experienced practice leaders who actively push processes and conventions, directly contribute to strategy, and take ownership for their team’s work.

Experience:

• Team leads are organized leaders who have extensive experience in leading the delivery of successful work and have contributed to or led work on multiple shipped products.
• They demonstrate the ability to drive change, improve workflows, and shepherd their team’s initiatives.
• They can plan and execute the work according to current priorities and are able to deliver solutions that meet requirements and constraints while maintaining high standards of quality.

Communication:

• Team leads have exceptional communication skills.
• They can clearly and confidently communicate decision-making rationale to their team, large groups, and organizational leadership.
• They can express complex ideas in a persuasive and succinct manner, educate partners, tell compelling stories, and keep their leadership informed of critical information they have identified.

Relationships:

• Team leads have strong relationships with their peers and stakeholders.
• They can influence partners, manage those relationships effectively, and reduce friction.
• They build long-term strategic relationships and operate from a holistic perspective that accounts for multiple teams.
• Leads can be flexible and manage stakeholders' expectations. Leads are equipped to facilitate difficult discussions within the team or with other stakeholders with confidence.
• Presence: Leads are the cornerstones of the team and act as resources, mentors, and role models for more junior members.
• Leads set the example for how to be “present” in a remote work environment.
• Leads take an active interest in the development of their teammates and make themselves available as a resource for feedback, guidance, and support for the rest of the team.

Accountability:

• Leads take responsibility for the team’s ability to deliver quality work on time.

Leadership:

• Leads foster a highly collaborative design process and are trusted by their team to talk through both scope and technical challenges and negotiate thoughtful outcomes.
• Takes a leadership role in cross-discipline meetings, bringing a design voice to the conversations and building trust between design teams and other disciplines.
• Able to positively influence partners and stakeholders, both directly and indirectly.