Director of Design
Who is MANTL?
MANTL is a fast-growing NYC-based FinTech SaaS company on a mission to build technology that will help America’s financial institutions and their communities thrive. Think Shopify or Squarespace, but purpose-built for community banks and credit unions. We are drastically changing the landscape through modern banking software that empowers banks and credit unions to grow digitally.
Our flagship product, Online Account Opening, has quickly become considered best in class in our industry, showing clear and material performance beyond any of our competitors. Suffice it to say, our customers love MANTL.
Since launching our first product in 2017, we have built several new products, thoughtfully grown the team, and have become a market leader.
Who makes up our team?
People are our most important asset and the number one reason we all love working at MANTL. As a team, we value accountability, transparency and collaboration. We have agile teams, with clear, outcomes-focused goals.
We're a group of passionate technologists that support an open and transparent culture that helps foster productive and engaging discussions. We want to work with inclusive people who understand the importance of treating their colleagues exceptionally well - people who will gladly go out of their way to help others with things big and small. We are always a work in progress and love hearing feedback from our team.
MANTL was proud to be named as one of Crain's 100 Best Places To Work in 2020.
ABOUT THE ROLE:
MANTL is looking for a highly motivated mission-oriented individual to lead the Product Design function through the next phase of growth. This person will lead our Account Opening Product Design team and develop strategic initiatives that drive long-term value, reporting to the VP, Product.
This person will blend both exceptional design leadership skills, design principles and process skills, and people leadership skills to ensure customers are achieving high value from the MANTL platform. They will work closely with our engineering, product, and program management teams as well as cross-functionally with sales, marketing, customer success, solutions engineering, and enablement teams.
The ideal candidate is someone with at least 12+ years of experience at a SaaS technology company, preferably with an understanding of banking operations or a Fintech background. They should be a self-starter who can identify gaps in the business, technology and product, work in the present environment and clearly define a path for the future.
Responsibilities
- Recruit, lead, retain, and grow an amazing team of product designers and design leads - mentor, coach, lead, and manage a team of top performers to advance their skill, contribution and impact
- Provide design leadership through the entire software development process, including research, ideation, designing, iterating and shipping new work - manage execution on company priorities and help define a design roadmap across multiple squads that drives the day-to-day design work.
- Own and drive the team responsible for design and ux decisions - ensure our products meet high standards of usability and design excellence.
- Oversee the integrity, quality and upkeep of our design system and components to make application of the MANTL design principles universally accessible and uniformly applied to all designs.
- Develop, refine, elevate, and evangelize our design principles - define the “MANTL experience” and ensure unity, quality and consistency in design.
- Create and manage design review, ideation, discovery/testing, and stakeholder management processes that foster collaboration, transparency, quality, consistency, and understanding, resulting in strong design standards and product outcomes.
- Be an evangelist for the product experience & design both internally and externally - work with clients and internal stakeholders alike to express the vision and value of the product experience.
- Work closely with senior leadership to keep the team and the design standards aligned to executive strategic goals for the future.
- Learn, if necessary, and scale market knowledge within Design, Product Development and all of MANTL to make MANTL an obsessive student of our customer and market.
Skills and Requirements:
- Twelve or more years of experience as a designer or design leader, with a track record of success and setting strong design direction.
- Five or more years of leadership experience in design leadership and management, running a multi-product area design strategy.
- Exceptional oral/written communication skills, with the ability to communicate equally well with a junior engineer, product manager, sales leader, customer or executive.
- Strong leadership skills - you hire, coach and steer your team to top performance. You are a skilled and experienced manager and leader.
- Proven ability to identify, define, and execute on goals both strategic and tactical - you create clarity and a path forward despite ambiguity.
- Systemic thinking skills that help scale our design process and create leverage within your team and clarity within the organization.
- Proven ability and judgement to weigh trade offs between investment areas to maximize value delivered and speed to get to market. You know when to pay off debt, when to ship, how to iterate, and how to balance risk and reward. You balance functional, design, technical, and business considerations when making decisions.
- Deep experience in and appreciation for customer, market and product discovery + leading product approaches and design-thinking frameworks.
- Proficient in scrum and agile practices, JIRA, Figma, and design operations, with experience scaling multi-product design teams.
- Deep appreciation, and ideally experience, working in B2B enterprise SaaS, fintech and/or Banking in a fast-paced, startup environment.
What You'll Like About Us:
Joining MANTL means joining an ambitious and exceptional team that solves complex problems every day. We offer a unique employee experience based on the values of transparency, accountability and collaboration, and are deeply proud of our culture.
MANTL offers competitive compensation packages, unlimited vacation, fully covered health insurance, creative and fun team-building events, mental health programs and more. We strive to show we truly care about our employees happiness and engagement.