Head of Product Design

Whereabouts: Within CET +/- 9 hours and have some restrictions on hiring engineering Interviews: Around 4 hours over a few weeks, including some practical work Salary: Starting at £70,000 | $100,000 for USA-based candidates Reporting to: Ingrid Ødegaard, our CPTO Ask us anything: careers@whereby.com “Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” – designer Joe Sparano Your mission at Whereby* To build a design function that is unified under one common set of objectives, and aligned with our product roadmap, vision and culture. *This is the mission that moves you and your team through our strategic roadmap, and should be your focus for up to a year or two. What is Whereby all about Freedom to work from anywhere: our mission with Whereby is to give people freedom to live and work where they thrive. Our global HQ is in Oslo, Norway, but our users (and team) are worldwide – having been used in nearly every country in the world by millions of folk. By making it possible to collaborate as well over video as you can in real life, we want to give you the choice to work from where your life happens. To allow you to be in a place where you can think and focus, but also allow a seamless and instant connection with others when you need to. For our 80 team members, and also for our customers, we know that the ability to decouple location from work can be life-changing. They can afford the house they want, can spend less time commuting, be closer to nature, and their children get to grow up seeing their grandparents every day. Everyone on our team enjoys the enormous benefits that a flexible work policy brings, and we truly believe the future of work will gravitate towards our vision of the future. Product at Whereby We strongly believe in the superpowers of an empowered, passionate and cross-functional product team. We are a product-led business who strive to evolve our product alongside users, exceed their expectations and delight them. We try to ensure both that we are building the right thing and building the thing right. We analyse data, talk to users, prototype and iterate. We focus on discovering and solving user problems, not just building and shipping features. As a member of our product team you’ll take on a key role in this process and see your work be used by millions of users worldwide. What we’re looking for in our Head of Product Design Our Product Design team is a crucial and talented team at Whereby. Like many of our teams (until recently) design has been operating without a function-specific head of department. The team has expressed a desire (and we feel the need as a business) to ensure design is advocated for at the leadership level, and also that the function is highly effective and admired. For this reason we’re looking for someone who has experience advocating for, while building, a growing function of highly-qualified designers. We believe in the power of simple, beautiful product design, and know achieving our aims requires a head of the function who understands the painstakingly difficult task of making a product experience feel simple and effortless. We believe in everyone We fundamentally believe talent is distributed to all of us in equal measure. We open our doors (physical or url) to everyone and we see our differences as a strength; it’s this philosophy that drives us towards our mission. This means we see your unique history as having a value money cannot buy; we believe in the strength of every intersection of race, religion or belief, ethnic origin, different physical ability, family structure, socio-economics, age, nationality or citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity. The nuts and bolts of the role*

• Please do not see everything in this job ad as “must have”, but rather a guiding list of what we’re looking for. We know that no candidate will be the perfect match for all we’ve mentioned in this posting, so don’t be afraid to apply if you feel you’re close to the brief but not “spot on” Your attributes Creative Empathetic and people-centric Commercial, with a product mindset Goal-orientated Data-informed   Your previous experience

Have extensive experience working with the design of a start-up or company with strong product-led culture (ideally SaaS, freemium model) Have experience in leading work on consistent design and branding across multiple products Experience leading senior professionals, and know how to engage an experienced team Having managed other managers (will likely be required in short-medium term) Worked in an agile, iterative work environment Experience working closely with international stakeholders in other functions (marketing, engineering, support) Experience with localisation of a product into various markets and languages You have managed remote teams, or teams with a hybrid distribution setup, and Are a really nice person with loads of ambition!

  How we’ll measure your success

Team happiness (we currently use the RANDs test, but will look at other metrics) Recruitment and onboarding Objective-setting and achievements within your function

  Strategic responsibilities

Ensure overall brand cohesiveness across all our products and channels, Building a strong Design and User Research team, Fostering a culture of experimentation and iteration, with data-driven decisions and outcome focus

  Tactical responsibilities

Function building of design team processes and principles Building a unique differentiated position for Whereby’s brand and product in the market Establish Whereby as an authority on Product Design (also to attract great talent) Advocating for Design in the Whereby product roadmap and leadership discussions

  Foundational responsibilities

Team management Some design and UX work when required Shadowing the team and working directly with PMs from time to time Roadmapping and strategic decision making for the Design & User Research function Advocating as a voice for Product Design/User Research amongst your peers and leaders Recruitment, onboarding and team-growth

  Your progression

Manage a high-performance design team With a commercial mindset you find joy and progression in hitting our goals and developing new milestones for yourself and the team You will be an important part of the Product Management team, giving input on the overall company and product strategy, from a design and user point of view As our company grows, you will need to work on promoting the design’s role across the department and ensure alignment with other leaders

  You’ve read all this way… you may as well apply! If you have any more questions, take a peek at our Recruitment FAQ on Notion or drop us an email to careers@whereby.com. Note: We perform background checks on certain roles. For more information about how and why we carry out background checks, this document is a great starting point. For anything further, please email careers@whereby.com or your Talent Partner. Whereby’s background checks will be carried out by Zinc.

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