Description

We're looking for an experienced Product Designer to join our team in Austin. As a designer at thoughtbot you work with our clients to turn their ideas into great products that people love to use, and then grow them into successful businesses.

Requirements

Values

Product Designers live out and uphold our thoughtbot purpose and Design Team values. They actively take part in shaping these values to make sure they continue to align with the entire team.

User Research

Product Designers conduct user interviews and usability tests on the projects that they are working on regularly. They plan a research study to gain understanding, test assumptions, or test usability. They execute that plan by facilitating people through interviews, usability tests, ethnographic research or other methods. They synthesize findings from the research to the rest of their team and can create actionable steps from it.

Group Facilitation

Product Designers can lead a group of people through design exercises. They're able to handle difficult situations or personalities. They foster a highly-collaborative and inclusive design process. They incorporated their entire team in the act of designing.

Product Thinking

Product Designers can lead a project team. They think strategically about how to release design in small pieces and regularly look for opportunities to validate the team’s ideas. By parsing through research, they can establish the project’s key success metrics. They help prioritize, refine and cut features based on the validation or invalidation that they find using research. They communicate potential process and infrastructure improvements while weighing clients' needs and budget.

Design Process

Each Product Designer follows the process that gets them to the best result in the shortest amount of time. Product Designers seek out new processes and techniques, tries them out and assesses whether the broader team should use them. Product Designers employ a broad set of design tools to best solve and communicate user flows, interaction, and motion and know which tool to use depending on the scope and phase of the project. They seek out new tools, try them out, and assesses whether the broader team should use them.

Visual Design

Product Designers at thoughtbot demonstrate and articulate an understanding of layout, typography and visual hierarchy. They establish and execute on a consistent brand and interface for a product.

User Experience Design

Product Designers take responsibility for the user experience for the products that they are working on. The design flows rather than individual screens. They ensure a consistent and intuitive experience across all of the features and products they are designing. They ensure that the copy for the product interface is consistent and follows the tone of the brand.

Implementation

Product Designers understand that their designs need to be carried through to the platform that they are designed for. For web applications, this means implementing their designs with HTML & CSS, maintaining a clean markup and style, and working with our Developers in Git. They figure out how these same implementation principles apply to mobile, service design and experience design.

Communication

Product Designers explain their design decisions to teammates, clients, and users. They share work early and often and seek out constructive feedback on the work they have done. They give constructive and impactful feedback to other team members. They educate current clients and prospective clients on how design makes them more successful. They communicate complex ideas clearly and succinctly.

Leadership & Mentoring

Our Product Designers take the initiative to lead rather than waiting for somebody else to. They take part in our design community by writing, participating in online forums and networks, and attending meetups and conferences. They mentor and teach other Product Designers, Apprentices at thoughtbot, and externally to thoughtbot. They participate in our hiring process for Product Designers and recruit other designers that they feel are a good fit for our team.

Very well-qualified candidates will also have experience with consulting, and have a proven track record of attracting potential customers.

All persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification upon hire.

Benefits

We like to keep ourselves happy while we work. Here at thoughtbot there’s stellar vacation time and fully stocked offices with everything from Klondike bars to neat little notebooks.

This is a full-time position with a competitive salary, paid time off, 401k with matching, and health insurance.

Our team works in a relaxed and educational environment to develop excellent products for our clients. We work a sustainable pace of 40 hours/week, consulting for clients four days/week. We also like to learn. Everything we do is predicated on having a great team and a culture of growing. We use the latest technologies and are always down to try new methods on both internal and client projects.

INVESTMENT DAYS

On Fridays, we have “investment time” when we learn new tools and techniques, work on open source, create new products, write blog posts, and try to make ourselves, each other, and the community better.

ALWAYS LEARNING

We pay 100% of expenses if you speak at conferences and 50% of the cost for attendees. We also have a 2-day hackathon at the end of every year.

STAY FRESH

We offer 25 paid vacation days and 11 paid holidays per year in addition to paid sick days. New parents receive at least 6 weeks paid parental leave in all locations, as well as the ability to take up to 6 months off.

HEALTHCARE + FINANCIAL

For full-time U.S. employees, we pay 100% of medical, dental, vision, and life insurance premiums, plus we have a comprehensive 401k plan.