We're looking for an experienced Product Designer to join our team in New York. 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.

About thoughtbot

We work with companies of all stages to help identify and solve problems. At thoughtbot, we’re involved in every step of the process. We lead and participate in product design sprints, create high-quality apps, and then deploy them. We use the latest technologies and are always ready to try new methods on both internal and client projects. Read more about how we work in our Playbook.

We believe there is always a better way to do our work, and we want to find it and share it with as many people as possible. We maintain an inclusive environment where we can thrive professionally, as well as have full lives outside of work. Read more about our Purpose and Values.

Our Benefits

Our goal is to provide ourselves with the best possible benefits, tools to use, and environments to work in while staying sustainable. We've shared the full details of all our benefits here.

• INVESTMENT TIME

  We consult for clients four days/week. On Fridays, we work to make ourselves, the company, and our community better by learning new tools and techniques, working on open source, blogging, creating new products, volunteering our time, and more.

• ALWAYS LEARNING

  We pay 100% of expenses when you speak at conferences and 50% of the cost for attendees. We also pay 50% of all expenses for job-related training.

• STAY FRESH

  We work a sustainable pace of 40 hours/week. We have five weeks (24 days in the UK) of vacation time per year, in addition to company holidays and sick days. For new parents, we also have at least 6 weeks paid leave in all locations, as well as the ability to take at least 6 months off.

• HEALTHCARE + FINANCIAL

  In the U.S. we provide competitive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, and a comprehensive 401k plan with matching. In the UK we provide supplemental private insurance and a group personal pension scheme.

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thoughtbot does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, age, national origin, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason prohibited by law in provision of employment opportunities and benefits.