Product Design Manager

Summary

Join Close, a 100% remote, profitable SaaS company, as a seasoned Product Design Manager. Lead and mentor a team of 5+ designers, overseeing web, desktop, and mobile app design. Drive user research, provide design reviews, and collaborate with Product Management and Engineering. Define and communicate a compelling design vision, aligning with product strategy and brand. This role requires 8+ years of product design experience (4+ years in management) and a strong portfolio showcasing elegant solutions for complex SaaS products. You'll work in six-week cycles, focusing on impactful product delivery. Close offers a supportive remote work environment with excellent benefits.

Requirements

• Have 8+ years experience in product design (4+ years in management)
• Experience in all aspects of design: User research, interaction design, visual design, etc
• Experience in establishing and improving processes for how a design team works
• Track record of working closely with Product and Engineering teams on successful projects
• Have helped build and maintain design systems
• Able to work roughly US east coast time zone hours (with a few exceptions, most of the product, engineering, and design teams are on the US east coast or in Europe)
• Strong portfolio of elegant and simple solutions for complex desktop/mobile SaaS products
• Strong understanding of information hierarchy, progressive disclosure, typography, spacing, color theory, etc
• Very knowledgeable about modern UX/UI patterns on desktop and mobile
• Exceptional taste in software design
• Enjoy helping product designers thrive and grow in their roles
• Comfortable working remotely with a high level of autonomy
• Customer and problem-focused
• Strong soft skills, especially around communication and collaboration
• Champion for design, but also know how to work within constraints and make trade-offs (we are big believers in having a fixed timeline, with flexible scope)
• Very knowledgeable about CSS, accessibility, etc
• Proficient with Figma (you know how to work with components, variants, variables, etc.)

Responsibilities

• Lead a distributed team of 5+ designers (mostly Senior-level)
• Host 1:1s and team meetings, and provide ongoing performance feedback
• Set and execute quarterly team goals
• Build strong team culture and continue to raise the bar for design quality
• Identify professional development opportunities for the team
• Grow the team, as needed
• Build and improve team processes
• Drive user research efforts to uncover pain points, opportunities, and insights
• Foster a culture within the design team of regularly doing qualitative and quantitative research (e.g., user interviews, surveys, usability testing, etc.)
• Ensure the design team integrates user research findings into design decisions
• Provide design review/critique on a regular basis (written feedback, video calls)
• Oversee design planning and assignments for each Cycle
• Help shape projects and ideas, especially early in the process
• Work closely with Product Management and Engineering teams at every stage
• Collaborate with Engineering on building out and organizing our design system
• Ensure consistency with Close’s overall brand
• Take on limited individual contributor work
• Define and communicate a compelling design vision that aligns with the product strategy and Close brand
• Contribute to longer-term roadmap planning
• Identify, plan, champion, and execute “Design-driven” projects (e.g., redesigns, etc.)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience or familiarity with Shape Up
• Experience in sales or with sales tools
• Experience in the B2B space
• Familiarity with GitHub Issues & Projects

Benefits

• 100% remote company
• 5 weeks PTO + Winter Holiday Break with 2 additional PTO days for every year with the company
• Choose between working 5 days/wk (standard full-time) or 4 days/wk @ 80% pay
• 1 month paid sabbatical every 5 years
• Paid parental leave
• Medical, Dental, Vision with HSA option (US residents)
• 401k matching at 6% (US residents)
• Dependent care FSA (US residents)