Director, Design
About Propel: We build financial tools for low-income Americans. Our first product, Fresh EBT, is a free mobile app that empowers SNAP recipients to more easily manage their benefits and discover new resources. Over 2 million people use Fresh EBT monthly across the US to manage their benefits as well as find new ways to save money and earn income. We are currently developing a new financial product designed to serve the unique needs of low-income households.
Propel offers a unique opportunity to create social impact at scale. We're a for-profit company backed by some of Silicon Valley’s top investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, the Omidyar Network, Kevin Durant, Nas, and Max Levchin. We're still a small team, enabling huge individual impact and promoting professional growth and flexibility.
About this role: Propel is seeking a Director of Design to join our mission to modernize America’s safety net. This position will play a leadership role in setting our product and design strategy and executing against this vision to create delightful and dignified digital experiences for a population that has traditionally been overlooked by tech innovation. You’ll work closely with business and product team members to research problems faced by our users, craft business campaigns, and scope new features.
We’re looking for a strong product thinker who can clearly communicate high-level ideas, generate hypotheses, and dive into the details to build an amazing product experience. You’ll help us solve important business problems, identify and prioritize opportunities to increase our impact, and lead and mentor other designers.
Example responsibilities:
- Collaborate with product managers, engineers, business team members, and external partners to develop and continuously refine a product strategy to help us achieve our company goals
- Refine and champion Propel’s core design philosophy and principles, ensuring these are consistently applied to every product and experience we build.
- Own full stack design projects, starting with research, developing initial wireframes, prototyping, and producing high fidelity mocks.
- Continue to build our user research capabilities and processes to ensure that we have the knowledge we need to make informed product decisions.
- Help us recruit and retain a world-class, mission-driven, and diverse design team.
About you
- 8+ years design experience, with at least part of that focused on consumer software
- Some experience managing or mentoring other designers is a nice to have.
- Excellent UX design skills, with a strong portfolio, a deep knowledge of design processes, and a thorough understanding of modern Android and iOS design patterns.
- Demonstrated expertise in defining mobile consumer product strategy that moves metrics. You have played core roles on teams that have shipped successful consumer products.
- Deep experience with user research throughout the product life cycle, and an understanding of the role that research should play in product conception, initial ideation, and post-product-market-fit.
- Excellent communication skills. You can bring internal stakeholders on your design journey and defend your decisions with data.
- Deep familiarity with the tools of the trade, however you define them. Comfort with HTML/CSS/JavaScript is required; experience using them to build prototypes, mockups, or production-level products is a plus.
