Product Designer
What we do
Ascend is a fintech company building the financing and payments infrastructure for the $1T insurance market (did you know insurance premiums make up 7.2% of global GDP?). More than 40% of payments are still made with paper checks resulting in poor customer experience and expensive and operationally intensive commercial workflow. Today's solutions were built 40 years ago for pen and paper insurance sales. Ascend is the first modern payments platform for insurance helping to enable the industry's rapid digitalization.
How we do it
Ascend automates insurance payments end-to-end — from online customer payments and financing to the distribution of commissions and carrier payables — so that insurance distributors can eliminate laborious, expensive processes while giving their customers the great online checkout and financing experience they've come to expect. Think Stripe + Affirm + Modern Treasury for insurance.
Why we do it
We exist to make it easier for people to protect the things they care about by simplifying and modernizing the insurance industry’s financial infrastructure.
Your role
You'll join as our second designer who will work closely with the founding team at an early stage of our startup journey. You're a strong individual contributor and will focus on growing and evolving Ascend's products to modernize the insurance industry's financial infrastructure starting with premium financing.
Responsibilities will include
- Regularly collaborate with our engineers, customers, business development team to ensure the best possible experiences for the customers and business, prioritize features, and take concepts from ideation to execution
- Work alongside exceptionally talented and compassionate engineers, who work efficiently and ship to spec
- Set the foundation and design culture at Ascend, both internally and externally
You might be a good fit if you are/have
- 2+ years of experience as an in-house Product Designer
- A generalized design skillset with strengths in visual design and user research and experience designing projects independently from start to finish.
- Experience creating design libraries and systems from scratch
- A deeply caring individual about crafting high-quality product and customer experiences, and can balance between being detail-oriented and moving the needle on company goals
- A great facilitator and collaborator across different functions, including engineering and business development. You're comfortable leading brainstorms and building a shared vision across the team.
- Experience jumping between product, brand, and marketing design
- Equally comfortable with sharing ideas, giving feedback, and listening to others
- A high comfort level navigating ambiguity and solving complex problems with an ownership mindset at the pace of an early-stage startup.
- A strong desire to learn new skills and business problems
- Interested in being a part of building a well-rounded company culture as well as create a positive impact on your team and customers
- Built financial or insurance products before. It's a major plus — particularly if the product took a non-traditional approach to financial and insurance technologies
Benefits
- Competitive base salary and meaningful equity in a fast-growing company
- Our in-office locations are across NYC, San Francisco, and Columbus
- Flexible vacation policy to encourage people to recharge and get offline
- Parental leave and flexibility for families
- 100% health premiums covered for you and your dependents
- In accordance with Ascend policies and our commitment to prioritizing the health and safety of our employees, all positions will require proof of COVID vaccination prior to entering the office. Guests who visit the office must also provide proof of vaccination prior to entry. Our COVID-19 health and safety protocols may change over time as local and national guidance and regulations evolve.
We encourage you to connect with us, even if you think you may not have the exact experience for this opportunity. We know that imposter syndrome is real – and that being outside of your comfort zone often prevents us from meeting candidates we would love to connect with and learn from as we grow.
Equal Opportunity
We're an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We don't discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
