Senior Product Designer

Your qualifications

• 4+ years of product design experience in desktop SaaS.
• Able to think from first principles instead of simply applying the “standard” UX processes.
• Can break down complex user problems by asking questions that narrow down the solution space.
• Enough experience that your intuition can solve many usability problems without having to rely solely on data & metrics or conducting user research.
• Curious & resourceful enough to come up with creative solutions and de-risk them appropriately.
• Strong skills in layout, navigation, IA, UI, and interaction design.
• Strong visual design skills and obsession with craft & details.
• As a bonus, you have experience at an early-stage startup or have spent time as a solo designer on a team.

You may want to apply if you’re excited about

• Creating leverage and impact far and above what you'd see in a typical EPD product team structure. You won’t be a cog in the wheel, the wheel is not very big!
• Getting to work on all parts of a massive product surface area - spanning many user types, JTBDs, usability challenges, etc. Unlike in other organizations, you won’t be stuck working on one problem for many years.
• Helping reinvent the design model for modern enterprise software—you don’t have to build wireframes, user journeys, personas, etc. What matters is solving a customer’s problem; what tools you use are up to you.
• Covering all parts of the design process with a focus on design craft. You'll still be doing the occasional user research interview but will be focused on using heuristics & experience to improve our IA, navigation, interactions, UI patterns, and more.
• Helping build our design system from (almost) the ground up.

Conversely, you may not want to apply if

• You feel uncomfortable designing independently without much guidance from a PM or design management.
• You’re uncomfortable having your decisions and process being challenged constantly by engineering & product.
• You prefer an in-person role over remote (Ashby operates remotely).
• You dislike written documentation.
• You want a set structure and rhythm to your projects.
• PM gives you a brief, you do wireframes, then mocks, then pass off work to engineers. Rinse and repeat.
• You prefer a narrow job scope - interaction design only, design system only, etc.

On a weekly basis you will find yourself

• Consulting for engineers who need help structuring layout, typography, flows, etc.
• Digging into problems by consulting GTM, talking to customers, asking for data requests, and more in order to present confident assumptions about your proposals.
• Using Figma to draw out your ideas and create visual artifacts for stakeholder alignment.
• Writing specification docs (we call them specs!) that detail your design proposals. These documents are meant to get stakeholder alignment on the biggest decisions you want to make and are a core part of how we work at Ashby.
• Taking ownership of larger product features and thinking through Jobs-To-Be-Done, navigation, information architecture, layout, interaction, etc.
• Taking in customer feedback and using heuristics to build your own usability backlog and propose projects for engineers to take on.
• Consolidating and refining our design system to be functional, aesthetic, and best-in-class.

Interview ProcessAt Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. We’ll dive into past projects and simulate working together and talking through decisions. Our interview process is four rounds with some casual Zoom coffee in between to get to know each other:

• 30m introduction call to discuss Ashby and your experience
• 45m portfolio review
• 75m design exercise and app teardown. The exercise will be a live whiteboarding exercise where we provide a prompt and you show us how you'd break down problems and come up with solutions.
• 2.5hr final round - meet the team + portfolio repeat with a founder

I'll be your main point of contact and prepare you for interviews. You’ll meet other engineers and product managers as well (with lots of time to ask them questions). If we don’t give an offer by the last round, I'll provide feedback as to why if you'd like it (I'm serious!).