Director of Product Design & Craft

Job Description

The Woobles is a fun, quirky brand with a lean, fast-paced, remote team. We’re looking for a Director of Product & Character Design with proven experience leading a creative design team translating characters into excellent physical products.

Location: Remote (Candidates in CA, CO, FL, MD, NC, NY, UT, or WI are preferred. We cannot consider candidates in the following states: CT, DC, GA, HI, MA, ME, MN, NJ, NM, OR, RI, SC, VT)

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ABOUT YOU
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- You’re an all-around good human being. Life is short, and you want to be around people you like. You’re kind, honest, and trustworthy. You want to work every day with positive, direct people who make you and your day better. No big egos allowed.

- You value autonomy. You do your best when you’re given lots of responsibility and independence. You thrive in ambiguity and enjoy making decisions. Lots of them. When you run into problems, you have the resourcefulness to solve it on your own, and the self-awareness to know when you need help. You’re comfortable working remotely.

- You care deeply about doing great work. You’ll do whatever it takes to get things done. But you don’t just settle at that. You’re always looking for ways to break your own records the next time around. Your teammates know they can always count on you, just like you can count on them.

- You eat feedback for breakfast. You’re always looking for ways to improve (yourself, the process, the product, you name it), so you give and take feedback with equal grace.

- You’ve got a sense of humor. Because have you seen what we make? You’re an emoji connoisseur and appreciate the art of well-timed GIFs. You want to work somewhere where a sentence like this is 100% relevant: “There’s 3 dinos on this one but I think it’s OK because one is riding a turtle.”

- You’re thoughtful and detail-oriented. You gather as much context as possible – from business to manufacturing constraints – so you can propose creative, on-point solutions no matter your role!

- But also fast. We launch anywhere from 3-10 products a month. You understand that one day’s delay can cause much longer than one day’s delay in the overall launch process, given that we’re manufacturing a physical product with teammates all over the world. You turnaround revisions quickly without compromising quality.

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THE ROLE
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1. You have an eye for precision, an aptitude for innovation, and a love of craft.
You'll lead the development of new kit patterns, product line extensions, and new product types from the first brief through prototype approval. You're as fluent in the realities of physical production (tolerances, material tradeoffs, sampling timelines) as you are in the world of arts and crafts (crochet, embroidery, weaving, macrame, etc). The opportunity to lead a team that develops gold standard craft kits takes a unique skill set, and you have it.

2. You lead by demonstrating excellence and empathy.
You'll manage and mentor a team of product designers and professional crafters, setting creative direction through clear briefs and giving feedback that moves work forward with everyone learning along the way. As the team grows and changes, you will be responsible for developing resources and assets that keep our product standards high, and team stress low.

3. Your team is where our characters are born, and you take that seriously.
You'll own and maintain the character style guides that keep every woobly shape, color, and execution looking exactly right, no matter the craft. You know how to apply a cohesive brand and character vision across mediums and know “off-model" the moment you see it. You'll become an internal authority on what looks like us and what doesn't, and you'll build the systems that make that judgment scalable across teams.

4. You know how to plan for deadlines, and how to adapt for changes.
You'll work closely with the other product channels (packaging, instruction, manufacturing) to stay in sync and ship projects on time. But when surprises and pivots inevitably arise, you know how to stay flexible, think on your feet, and keep your team focused on clever solutions.

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REQUIRED SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS
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- 5-10 years in product design, with at least 2 years in a creative leadership role.
- Strong portfolio featuring original character work, and/or product design that demonstrates experience maintaining character or brand consistency across diverse formats and materials.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to articulate big artistic concepts in a bite size way to both designers and non-designers alike.
- Experience in toy, craft, gift, or adjacent CPG categories is a plus.

Application Details

Submit your resume, portfolio, and the line "I'd love to be a Woobler", to [email protected] with the subject line: “APPLICATION: Director of Product Design & Craft”.

In a Loom video, tell us about your approach to the product process and design leadership. Take us on a product journey from concept to completion. What constraints and challenges did your team face? What wins are you proud of? What did you learn from your experience?