Senior Product Designer

Join the team building the world’s largest B2B marketplace.

Our Vision:

If we connect buyers and sellers of essential chemistry at the onset of inspiration, we’ll accelerate product innovation globally.

Knowde is transforming the $5 trillion chemical industry. Chemistry (chemicals, polymers & ingredients) are those raw materials used to create every human-made product on earth. Can’t wait for that foldable phone? Thank DuPont. Need baby wipes for your infant? Thank Lonza. Love those solar shingles that power your home? Thank Dow Chemical. Chemical, polymer and ingredient companies are the hidden innovators behind the end- products everyone relies on every day.

Knowde is building a rich, digital marketplace where R&D, marketing and procurement teams can search, find, compare, sample, quote and purchase chemistry from every producer on Earth — all in one place.

Knowde is your chance to join a hyper-growth focused & well-funded startup backed by Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Bee Partners, Refactor Capital, Cantos & Knollwood Investments.

Knowde is looking to add an immensely talented Lead/Senior Product Designer with deep experience working with highly transactional systems (Dashboard, CRM, order management, DAM, Search) to our product team. The products we will create together simply do not exist today. This is your chance to fundamentally affect how new product innovation occurs globally across industries.

D WELCOME!

Our Lead/Senior Product Designer will apply their natural information, interaction and visual design talents to solve complex interaction design challenges. We need someone highly experienced in working with complex data sets and designing tools to make managing these sets simple. This talented team member will spend their days sketching, designing, prototyping and detailing gorgeous user experiences that surprise and delight our customers. We want magic. Oohs and ahhs. Smiles and flutters. This is your chance to design that experience you’ve always dreamed about. You can take your great ideas, the ones you have tucked away in the back of your mind, the ones you’ve never been able to get approval to build and bring them to life at Knowde.

ABOUT YOU

You’ve designed complex UI/UX interactions with an eye towards a high-end consumer-like experience.
You are a Product Designer, UX Designer, UI Designer, Experience Designer, Interaction Designer… there are many different labels. If one of these fits you, you may be a great fit for Knowde.
You are a “full stack” Product Designer, a UX/UI hybrid – you’re a hands-on, gifted designer of information and interaction who has a great eye for visual design.
You can own the design end-to-end. You start with a sketch or the whiff of an idea and you can breathe life into it all the way through to detailing every interaction and edge case.
You love Interaction design and have been designing online apps and sites for years.
You love B2B UX/UI and you’ve wondered what the world would feel like if the B2B UX was as appealing and engaging as B2C.
You love to own big projects and aspire to share your knowledge and experience with larger teams as you grow in your role.
You love design patterns, know them well and have contributed to pattern libraries yourself.
You pay attention to detail but don’t sweat it when things change.
You finish the work… dot those “I”s and cross those “T”s.
You work fast and hard and then move on to the next project.
You communicate often and don’t get defensive when asked to elucidate your design choices.
You are guided by experience and intuition and can make design choices and understand the reasoning behind them.
You are self-directed, self-motivated and thrive on collaborative independence where coming together to brainstorm feeds your focused work while detailing your design.
You love to solve complex problems with simple, elegant solutions.
You are skilled in the leading design tools including those for rapid prototyping like Figma, Sketch, Axure, XD and others.
You understand how design systems are built. You know when to follow and when to break established interaction patterns. You champion consistency, flexibility, and reuse. You adore Atomic Design for it's structure and elegance.
You understand coding and, while you may not code yourself, you know how to produce designs that can be built within frameworks, using patterns that focus energy on what matters and differentiates.
You embrace mobile first and then work on the designs for folks still using desktops to get work done.

ABOUT KNOWDE

Knowde is a well-funded start-up based in San Jose but with work opportunities around the globe: Our core team is in San Jose and Seattle, but you can work from wherever it makes sense for you.
At Knowde, everyone owns the product and the product is our passion.
No one works 9-5. We’re a start-up.
We think big, move fast and have strong opinions.
We frame things up and expect you to fill in the blanks.
We are open to great ideas and are willing to experiment.
We believe in work flexibility and respect your need to work in your own space.
Everyone executes and delivers.
If you work with Knowde you will share in our success.

TOOLS

We design in Figma. You’ll need to be a Figma guru. Or, in Sketch, Axure or XD or others as they serve the project
And, Adobe Creative Cloud…
And, pen, pencil and paper…
We organize with Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, Asana, Slack ..
And, whatever else works that may be needed to get the job done

SKILLS WE’RE LOOKING FOR

Leadership and drive. We need someone to step in, grab a project, tell us “I got this!” and deliver the designs working with an analyst, PM and other members of the team.
UX/Interaction Design (wireframes, personas, flows, story maps).
UI/Visual Design (color, line, type, shape, image, composition).
Strong knowledge of user experience/user-centered design processes and methodology.
A passion for creating products and services that resonate emotionally with people.
5+ years designing products end-to-end.
Experience designing B2B application and/or familiarity with common B2B business processes.
Ability to function as a project leader as well as an individual contributor.
Proficiency with visualizing, sketching, designing and prototyping user interfaces.
Updated on the latest techniques/trends/thinking within your field and ready to share your knowledge and thoughts with both colleagues and clients.
Ability to work within distributed, multidisciplinary teams.
Excellent communication and facilitation skills.

DAY IN THE LIFE

Wake up! Do what you do.
Work with Product team and tech teams daily to stay in synch, answer questions, brainstorm and provide direction.
Depending on where we are at in the design cycles – wireframes, mock-ups, design comps, all the responsive looks, notes and documentation so engineering knows how to build
Co-design with business team, then flesh out and detail the designs solo and present the same or next day. Lots of iterations.
Perform content analysis, task analysis, task modeling, and define usage scenarios that will help drive design requirements.
Create and document information design concepts and solutions by various means, including sketches, diagrams, maps, storyboards, and rapid prototypes.
Have fun and take care of yourself.

EDUCATION/TRAINING REQUIREMENTS:

A bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience, preferably in graphic design, information design, user interface design, fine art, industrial design, product design or another visual communications discipline.

COMPENSATION

Contract or FTE available depending on preference
Pay is competitive and commensurate with experience
FTE positions include benefits and equity participation

LOCATION

Flexible base but prefer greater Seattle area. Work from our office flex space or from home studio with in-office meetings each week.

Knowde does not and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status.