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Job Description
Contentful is seeking a Director of Experience Design who can help us continue to positively evolve the Experience team as we continue to build a world class team. Lead and inspire a high-performing team of product designers and managers working within delivery teams across multiple product areas in an embedded design, cross-functional team model. You should possess strong design, communication and leadership skills and have a proven track record of building excellence, quality and process in the discipline. The ideal candidate will have strong people management skills, organizational design experience, as well as an accomplished systems, interaction, and UX design credentials. The Contentful Product Design culture emphasizes elevating design quality and efficacy in an evidence-based highly collaborative product culture, so our new Experience Director should help accelerate that ongoing evolution. You will report into the VP of Experience.
You can work from our Berlin office, or remotely from Germany, Netherlands, UK, and Ireland.
What to expect?
- Strong leadership skills, with the ability to coach and support team members and senior managers.
- Identify and implement best practices and processes for UX, service design, content strategy and user research, ensuring that the team is operating efficiently and effectively.
- Support design managers, design operations and ICs to scale the design practice for success with management and engineering.
- Attract and retain a diverse team of highly talented design leaders with a well-balanced range across purposefully chosen skill sets as we evolve into a world class experience team.
- Evolve a thriving culture where designers grow in their careers and feel a strong sense of belonging.
- Drive design vision with the VP of Experience and our cross functional leadership team.
- Partner closely with the senior leadership in developing a winning strategy to achieve our mission.
- Foster collaboration and customer focus across the company.
- Help to create alignment with product and engineering on priorities leading to product design and execution.
- Partner closely with a world-class team of product managers, designers, engineers, user experience researchers, and data analysts to deliver high quality experiences for different user persona and product tiers.
- Set quality standards and implement process improvements and OKRs to support them.
What you need to be successful?
- 10+ years of total design experience
- 5+ years of those leading direct reports
- Experience in also leading user research, content strategy and/or service design teams is a plus
- Significant experience in leading multiple teams and initiatives simultaneously
- A track record of conceptualizing and shipping successful SaaS products
- The ability to lead complex design topics, scaling your presence from clearly communicating a design vision to addressing project or organizational issues
- An informed set of design principles from shipping and learning throughout your career, and a demonstrated ability to operate from a first-principles perspective
- A deep understanding of human-centered design practices, how to leverage product design to solve complex business problems, and digital product development (consumer research, engineering, and data)
- Senior people management (manager of senior managers), team development, recruiting, coaching and org building experience
- Experience building relationships with leadership across the organization (with marketing, sales, customer experience, etc.), and comfortable influencing strategic decisions
- Experience working with autonomous, self-organising teams.
- Experience delivering customer outcomes with product and engineering via fast cycle times (weeks not months)
- Experience working in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or other technology-based company is a plus.
What's in it for you?
- Join an ambitious tech company reshaping the way people build digital experiences
- Full-time employees receive Stock Options for the opportunity to share ownership and the success of our company
- We value Work-Life balance and You Time! A generous amount of paid time off, including vacation days, education days, and volunteer days
- Access to our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for information, support, discussion, and counseling for life’s challenges
- Use your personal education budget to improve your skills and grow in your career. Join a free German class or one of our many internal learning initiatives!
- Use your physical fitness budget to get away from your desk and support your physical wellness
- Enjoy a full range of virtual events, including workshops, guest speakers, and fun team activities, supporting learning and networking exchange beyond the usual work duties
- A monthly phone/internet stipend and phone upgrade reimbursement after 2 years
- Plus, Contentful socks! And other amazing swag as part of company events. Oh yeah!