Senior Product Designer at Tandem

The Senior Product Designer role at Tandem is all about collaborating with clients to help them solve meaningful business challenges. While this does involve designing usable and effective interfaces, this is only part of the job. Our consultants participate in client meetings, discovery sessions, human centered design discussions, and help with user research and feasibility in service of building products that fit with a customer's business.

Design consultants spend their days working directly with their clients in small teams of 4-6. The product designer is comfortable in all stages of the design process. This person conducts research using human centered design methodologies, translates insights that are geared towards digital products, creates wireframes and design elements, and collaborates with developers. The environment and work is very team-oriented, highly visible, and focused on business value. And, like all team members, the design consultant will exemplify Tandem’s values in the execution of this work.

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
• Lead teams that create high quality design work at every stage of the design process
• Collaborate with client partners and engineering leads to manage project timelines, work streams, and priorities
• Lead user research efforts through interviews, focus groups, and brainstorming
• Storyboard and model product interactions
• Create wireframes and prototypes for client and user testing
• Work closely with software engineers to explore feasibility and oversee design implementation
• Solve complex problems and propose simple solutions
• Design pixel perfect designs for mobile, web, tablet, and devices
• Collaborate with software developers to 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

Requirements

Skills and Experience

• 5-8 years within the digital industry
• A strong visual design portfolio and personal aesthetic
• Strong knowledge of information architecture
• Experience designing across multiple platforms and mediums
• 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
• Deep understanding of business and the ability to fit design into a business context
• Experience leading user research: interviews, focus groups, brainstorming, etc
• Ability to own vision and strategy or a product and lead a team
• Mastery in articulating design decisions, business impact and value of design
• Strong experience with design tools, like Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite
   

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 ($120,000-$150,000)
• 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