Product Designer at Tandem

We're hiring a Product Designer III to join our team. Our Product Designers have strong visual and product skills and demonstrated leadership ability. Read on to learn about us, what it’s like to work with us, what we’re looking for, and our hiring process.

Who We Are

Tandem is a technology and innovation studio that specializes in strategy, design, and development. We create custom software that inspires people and drives business forward. As a talented group of thinkers and makers from many disciplines, we are brought together by a shared goal: do work that changes the world for the better.  We always focus first on people — our clients, their customers, and our team — by collaborating to solve meaningful business challenges. We enjoy designing and building ambitious digital products and tools.

What It’s Like To Work With Us

As a consultancy, we have the opportunity to solve a lot of different problems. We work directly with our clients in small teams, building and providing guidance on products, and collaborating with designers. Our unique approach to consulting leads to a better developer experience and a higher quality of work life.

Our vision is to create a supportive, collaborative environment and empower people to deliver work they’re proud of. At Tandem, everyone teaches and everyone learns. Egos are low, and we're all genuinely interested in seeing everyone else succeed. 

In this role you will...

• Work closely with your teammates and customers (during and after the sales process) to discover the best possible product to solve customer needs
• Create high quality digital design work at every stage of the design process
• Lead and support user research efforts through interviews, focus groups, and brainstorming
• Storyboard and model product interactions
• Create wireframes and prototypes for client and user testing
• Design pixel perfect designs for mobile, web, tablet, and other devices
• Collaborate with software engineers to explore feasibility, implement interface designs, and maintain quality through design reviews
• Learn new design tools and techniques as the industry and customer needs evolve, and recommend tools for each project based off the unique needs of each
• Take responsibility and ownership for project work streams as a subject matter expert

Requirements

Skills and Experience

• 3-5 years within the digital industry
• A portfolio showing strong visual design and personal aesthetic
• Understanding of information architecture
• Familiarity with designing for the web and mobile, and with responsive design concepts
• Familiarity with data visualization and the communication of data through software interfaces
• Solid grasp of the fundamentals of design: color, composition, typography, proportion, rhythm, and form
• Basic understanding of business and the ability to fit design into a business context
• Comfortable with planning, conducting, and synthesizing user research: interviews, focus groups, brainstorming, etc
• Comfortable presenting work to stakeholders and clients, and an ability to use storytelling to present compelling solutions
• Strong experience with design tools (Figma, Sketch, Adobe Suite, etc.)

Nice to Have

• Comfortable with front-end web development in HTML and CSS

Personal Competencies

• Excellent communication skills; we like to describe ourselves as concise, accurate, warm, but direct
• Obsessive eye for detail
• Proactive and self-directed
• High degree of self-awareness and empathy

How We Work and Our Benefits

We care deeply about our team and strive to provide flexibility and benefits so each person can prioritize the things they care about. 

For example, our core working hours are from 10am-4pm. The goal of core hours is to ensure that we can pair and collaborate in a high-bandwidth way during the majority of our workday while allowing us the flexibility that real life requires. You may notice that 10am-4pm for five days doesn't add up to 40 hours - yet 40 is generally what we expect to do. How you organize your work time outside of core hours is at your discretion, whether this is early mornings, late evenings, or weekends (though weekend work is not recommended). 

Our other benefits include

• Healthy work/life balance with no overtime requests; work 40 hours and go home
• Competitive annual salary ($95,000-$125,000)
• 100% employer paid medical, dental, and vision plans for employee, spouse, and family
• 100% employer paid life insurance policy
• 100% employer paid short-term and long-term disability insurance
• 3 weeks of paid time off to start, increasing by 1 week each year up to 5 weeks off
• 3 paid conference days each year
• Annual learning budget for conferences, courses, online training, books, etc.
• Eligibility to enroll in the Tandem retirement plan with 3% employer matching after 6 months of employment

For a full list of all benefits and employment policies, please check out our Company Handbook.

Our Hiring Process

We use a 4 step process.

1. Application
2. Phone screen
3. Portfolio Review
4. Design Challenge

The first step in our process is to fill out our application form. You will be asked a few questions on that form. We value thoughtful responses and will disregard applications without them.

If we decide to move forward, we’ll follow up with you to schedule an initial phone screen with one of our designers. Our phone screens are a chance for us to get to know the person behind the resume. We won’t be grilling you on design philosophies but are interested in learning about your career trajectory, professional experiences, and what interests you.

If that goes well, we’ll ask you to do a portfolio presentation. We like to see a mix of technical design presentations as well as process and how you arrived at your solutions. We will also leave time for you to ask us some questions.

The last step in the process is a virtual design challenge. We will pair you with some members of our team and ask you to solve a design problem. This is not real client work. We will use this challenge to understand how you work and how you articulate your design decisions.

If all goes well, you will move to the offer stage.

Who You’ll Be Working With

To get a sense for us, check out these posts about and by our team.

How To Give a Prototype Presentation (and How To Be a Good Audience for One!) by McKenzie Landorf

Want to Work in UX or UI? 5 Tips for Design Students and New Graduates by Amy Johnson

Applying Design Principles to the Chicago Board of Elections' Vote By Mail Website by Taher Motiwalla