Vice President, Design
BigCommerce, named a "Best Place to Work" in Austin 2018, is looking for a VP of Design who is a thought leader to represent Design inside and outside of the company. This person will collaborate across the entirety of BigCommerce to create a seamless, user-centered product and marketing design culture that deliver on our brand promise.
As the VP, Design, you will be responsible for ensuring a high standard in UX and the look + feel across our brand, sales, marcomm, and product channels. You will have the opportunity to partner with leaders across all of our business functions to set a vision for world-class design in their areas. Your team of designers spanning visual storytelling, UX research & design, and UI design will support you in delivering high-value solutions to the tens-of-thousands of merchants on our platform.
What you’ll do:
Creative Leadership
- Communicate design strategy and vision at all levels, balancing the guiding ‘north star’ with the need to be tactical and delivery-oriented.
- Lead design execution to a high standard while aligning the design team to both functional and corporate strategies.
- Ensure functional teams are constantly aligned to customer-focus via best practices, UX research, and appropriate solution validation.
Managerial Leadership
- Manage, mentor, and grow a world-class team of designers.
- Set the cultural and environmental tone for the design team to work effectively—including design team collaboration as well as cross-functional partnership.
- Drive our competency framework and career progression to ensure development paths for team members.
- Create management and success structure that enables each designer’s greatness at BigCommerce.
- Proactively identify and resolve issues that may impair the team’s ability to meet its goals.
- Create a framework to provide inspiration, coaching, educational, and development opportunities to designers.
Operational Leadership
- Organize and extend teams to ensure design excellence and effectiveness across all areas of the business.
- Establish a partner and team-oriented design culture.
- Ensure a high-quality Design output, respecting business requirements, brand values, design excellence and deadlines.
- Identify process improvement opportunities and implement relevant design processes to manage the supply of design resource.
- Manage budgets and ensure schedules align to corporate-level commitments.
- Partner closely with engineering, product, marketing, sales and others to find practical solutions to problems.
Who you are:
- Bachelor’s or advanced degree in appropriate field, such as Design or HCI.
- A demonstrated fluency in brand, visual, and user experience design.
- 15+ years relevant design and UX experience with a solid understanding of design methods, tools and processes & 10+ years experience in design leadership or management function with a track record of hiring & developing high-performing design teams.
- Experience and expertise in high-level product and marketing strategy.
- Able to guide others through ambiguity, coach them to articulate a point of view and identify the path to a high-quality end result.
- Sharp presentation skills, including executive presentations and public speaking at events, etc.
- Objective and leveled facilitation skills, able to make tough decisions with others and effectively align teams to your rationale.
- Willingness for occasional travel to your people that are located across all four of our offices.