Design Strategist, New Frontiers - Location Flexible
Role Description
The New Frontiers Group combines three teams within Dropbox: product incubation, machine learning, and 3rd party integrations. Together, we support existing products at Dropbox to develop new features and are responsible for establishing new lines of business in the medium term.
We are looking for a Design Strategist to help drive ambitious, new product plans and growth strategies. Connecting design to the bigger strategic picture, you will combine a design thinking approach with an understanding of business models, market trends, competitive dynamics, and industry specifics. You should be a natural persuader, crafting compelling product narratives that resonate with teams and leadership. In particular, you’ll use mocks, prototypes, and other artifacts to pitch ideas at all stages of refinement. You will also cultivate positive relationships with partners across the organization.
The Design Strategist ultimately will build Dropbox’s competitive advantage by answering questions of where to play and how to win. In particular, you will be responsible for mapping from high level opportunities to specific product concepts and roadmaps. You will also be involved in the tactical execution of products and features, taking a direct role in initial product exploration, while providing advice and support as projects mature.
Responsibilities
- Navigating the strategy, discovery, and design phases of the design process
- Interviewing partners and users to uncover insights
- Working with UX Researchers to frame and design a study
- Identifying and recognizing insights amongst large data collections
- Translating foundational research into actionable strategy and compelling product concepts
- Divergent, generative thinking - able to generate lots of ideas quickly
- Convergent thinking - using analytical tools to set direction with clear rationale
- Communicating iteratively through various media, from sketches to high resolution prototypes
Requirements
- 3+ years of design or strategy experience
- Demonstrated experience with collaborating closely with cross-functional partners — researchers, product managers and engineers to ship product.
- Clear, compelling presentation and communication style
The ideal candidate:
- Wants to influence the direction of the broader Dropbox organization through their work
- Loves highly complex, fast paced challenges
- Thrives in ambiguity and prefers an entrepreneurial style of approaching work
- Is comfortable working outside of the traditional job ladder for design, bridging with business operations and being highly cross-functional in the tackling of problems
- Is comfortable with the inherent nature of strategy work:
- Deferred Gratification - you may not see your projects launch for 2+ years and some of your best work might never materialize
- Influencing, not owning - you will hand over projects to product teams at some point, without seeing them through to launch
- Innovating - you're defining a new career path rather than following an established one; we don’t have all the answers yet about what Design Strategy is
