Director of Product Design at Equidate in San Francisco, CA

About You:

You are an experienced, passionate Design leader. You enjoy direct contribution at every level from long term strategy to the pixel-perfect details of the moments comprising an amazing customer experience. You are energized at the idea of joining a world-class Design organization, at a company where Design is highly prized as a differentiator and competitive advantage.

You have impressive formal training, extensive direct contribution experience to show, and experience successfully managing and collaborating with teams in leadership roles.

At Forge, our Design approach includes creative space to think strategically about the long term, to explore and research the near future with customers, and to distill the creative process into a carefully crafted user experience for active development. The successful candidate will bring their own approach and experience to these areas, with a mandate to build a dream team of experts across them all.

You thrive in team settings, collaborating with other technology teams as well as sales, marketing, operations and other groups across a company. You are a skillful, articulate and prolific communicator, as one of your key approaches to successful collaboration.

Responsibilities:

• Team: Did we mention that our people are our greatest asset? Well, we meant it. A primary key to success for this role will be leading a team of talented Designers to become a world-class practice with broad organizational and industry impact.
• Culture: diverse, inclusive, empowering and aligned with Forge’s values of bold, humble and accountable
• Technical Capabilities: UI, UX, interaction, flows, hierarchies, layout, navigation, shape, color, typography, iconography, copy, brand integration and thoughtful collaboration with partner brands/experiences.
• Impact: creators of Design systems that scale for others to build on, enabling consistent Design excellence to extend across the entire company
• Strategy: lead an approach to Design that delivers scalable excellence in and beyond the Design team, across all products and into other areas of the business.
• Research: Partner with the Forge Product Team to establish relationships with customers and conduct research into needs, approaches to solving them, and refining the approach that you will help teams to build out. Create user journey maps and storyboards to map entire experiences from first impression to repeat interactions.
• Flexibility: comfortable with all levels of fidelity, from low-fi/paper concept wireframes and user experience mocks, to pixel-perfect guidance around moments and flows.
• Collaboration: An eager collaborator with Technology teams, Sales teams, Operations teams, and beyond. Ability to lead by example to help our teammates and internal customers adopt better Design thinking practices and increase focus on customer outcomes.

Must have:

• An undergraduate degree including a focus on Design, or equivalent experience applying your undergraduate degree in a Design role.
• You have 5 or more years of Design experience, plus experience inside a technology company successfully leasing a Design practice with direct reports.
• A world-class portfolio, exhibiting your fit with the “About You” section above through your work
• Many examples of challenges, collaborations, championed efforts and other representative experiences representative of delivering Design excellence in and from within a technology company.
• Direct contribution and leadership experience in Design for consumer software experiences
• Alignment with Forge’s values of being bold, humble and accountable.
• Strong written skills for our products, company collateral and internal documentation.