We're looking for a well-rounded Design Team Lead to join our team, Lift Off, which focuses on new product design and development. In this role, you’ll provide mentorship and support a team of up to four teammates: individual contributors who are design consultants. Additionally, you’ll work directly with clients on projects as a Senior/Lead Designer, collaborate with other team leadership on team fulfillment, client success, and improving team processes and partner closely with product managers, designers, engineers, and clients to help solve problems.

Designers in this role will wear many hats, so we’re hoping to see both examples of UI and UX work and examples of front-end engineering in your portfolio.

thoughtbot is a remote company. This is a fully-remote, full-time position on the Lift Off team, which focuses on building significant initial versions of new products for existing companies or complex new startups. We're looking for teammates who overlap with our clients' working hours. This position is available to anyone throughout the Americas (UTC-3 through UTC-10).

Salary

Salary and benefits vary by location and country. The US salary range for this role is $128,000- $148,000

About Thoughtbot

We believe that it is possible to continuously learn and improve the way people work while building higher-quality products that make positive contributions to the world. We work with companies in every step of the product development and maintenance process to help identify and solve problems. We lead and participate in product design sprints, build high-quality apps, and then deploy them.

We proactively work on improving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at thoughtbot. We aim to maintain an inclusive work environment where everyone can thrive professionally, as well as have full lives outside of work. Read about our DEI efforts in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion section of our Playbook. We acknowledge that DEI work is never done, and that we will make mistakes along the way. We are continuously working on learning, improving ourselves, and the company.

As a member of thoughtbot, you’ll be part of our distributed remote community. We’re continuously working to assure remote work is inclusive, collaborative, comfortable, and social.

Want to dig deeper? Read more about our Purpose and Values, and how we work in our Playbook.

Requirements

• You have experience in mentoring team members. You want to help Designers continue to grow skills and provide career development support.
• You demonstrate and articulate an understanding of layout, typography, visual hierarchy, and accessibility in web and mobile interfaces.
• You can implement your designs with HTML & CSS, maintaining a clean markup and style, and working with our Developers in Git.
• You research to gain understanding, conduct user interviews and usability tests, and document ethnographic research or other methods, so you can synthesize well and craft actionable steps from it.
• You think iteratively and holistically about how to release design in small pieces and show your work often to clients and team mates
• You articulate design decisions well and can give constructive and impactful feedback to others. You educate and know how to support clients through learning more about design, validating products, and through difficult situations or tough conversations.
• You have experience with facilitating design sprints and building design systems
• You foster a highly-collaborative and inclusive design process and workplace. We especially appreciate candidates that demonstrate commitment to valuing DEI and contributing to an inclusive working and learning environment. We also understand that not everyone has had the opportunity to commit to this work, and that's okay.

thoughtbot designers are fully capable of creating great visual design as well as doing great product design and user experience, and then implementing their designs with front-end technologies. As Design Team Lead, you should be very experienced in at least one of these areas.

Qualified candidates value diversity, equity, and inclusion, and contributing to an inclusive working and learning environment.

Well-qualified candidates demonstrate commitment to valuing DEI and contributing to an inclusive working and learning environment. We also understand that not everyone has had the opportunity to commit to this work, and that's okay.

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t match 100% of the requirements. Let us know if you need any specific accommodations during the interview process.

thoughtbot cannot sponsor work visas at this time.

Benefits

For US-based team members thoughtbot pays at least 90% of the medical insurance premiums for individuals, 80% for their families for all medical plans, and 100% of the premium for employees and their families for our core dental plan and vision coverage. We cover disability insurance, basic life insurance with the opportunity to buy up. We also offer a comprehensive 401(k) plan with company match and immediate vesting. Team members accrue 20 paid vacation days and receive 11 paid holidays per year in addition to 10 paid sick days. New parents receive at least 6 weeks paid parental leave, as well as the ability to take up to 6 months off.

Our team works in a relaxed and educational environment to develop excellent products for our clients. We work a sustainable pace of 40 hours/week. We also reserve at least 4 weeks per year for investing in ourselves, the company, and our community. Everything we do is predicated on having a great team and a culture of growing. We use the latest technologies and are always down to try new methods on both internal and client projects.

thoughtbot does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, age, national origin, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason prohibited by law in provision of employment opportunities and benefits.

thoughtbot does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. Any unsolicited resumes not originating directly from a candidate and sent to thoughtbot or any thoughtbot's employees, including unsolicited resumes sent to a thoughtbot mailing address or email address, are rejected. thoughtbot will NOT pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume. thoughtbot considers any candidate for whom the recruiter has submitted an unsolicited resume referred by the company free of any fees.