Senior Manager - Product Design

About Shift

We believe car buying should be fun, fair, and accessible to everyone. We’ve set out to transform an industry, using technology to bring transparency and convenience to the car buying process.

And we aren’t stopping there. We seek to bring that same openness and simplicity to car ownership too, with payments, maintenance, and insurance in one easy app. At Shift, we’re building the tools that empower people to buy, own, and sell the cars that make life go.

About The Role

Help Shift transform the consumer experience around buying and selling used cars. We’ve set out to flip the script on this notoriously customer-unfriendly industry by creating a used car marketplace that puts customers at the center, aligns with them instead of against them, and creates value for them at every step in the process. We want every Shift customer to love the car they buy from us, and the experience of buying it from Shift.

We can’t do this without a world-class design team, and we’re looking for a strong leader, mentor, and design thinker to build and manage the Product Design function at Shift. This role oversees the full range of work this team delivers, from user research and insights, to brand and visual identity, to service and in-person experience design, to web and native mobile UI/UX design for both consumer and internal products. We’re looking for a design manager who is comfortable and capable leading and setting the team up to deliver high-impact work in all these areas.

Shift needs a design evangelist, able to build strong relationships with stakeholders, helping them understand the value of your team’s work, and of design thinking as a toolkit and mindset everyone can use. In this role, you and your team will represent the voice of the end user to Shift’s platform, operations, and leadership teams, ensuring that we always consider the user’s perspective in both strategic and tactical decisions.

What You'll Do

• Manage and develop Shift’s Product Design team. Set each designer up for success, impact, and career growth.
• Push for excellence throughout the design and product lifecycle. Facilitate design reviews and critiques, providing candid, constructive feedback to help improve the work and strengthen each designer’s skillset. Set the team up to deliver high-impact insights, solutions, and design artifacts.
• Work closely with Product, Engineering, and Ops leaders to improve processes and strengthen working relationships between Design and other functions at Shift. Set the design team up to engage and make impact throughout the end-to-end product lifecycle.
• Influence product and company strategy, representing both the design discipline and the “voice of the customer” to the rest of Shift. Advocate for a human-centered approach in everything we do.
• Partner with marketing, product, and senior leadership on brand strategy and identity. Drive implementation of a new brand identity in 2020.
• Partner with recruiting to attract and develop great designers, helping them do challenging and impactful work at Shift.

What We Ask For

• 5-7 years of consumer product design experience across all formats and devices (desktop, mobile web, native mobile, etc).
• 2-3 years of experience managing designers.
• Strong skillset and experience with human-centered design.
• Excellent visual design skills.
• A portfolio that tells the story of your work and demonstrates strong human-centered design.

Nice To Have

• Experience working in a fast paced, startup environment.
• Experience designing in-person and remote service experiences.
• Strong user research skills.

On diversity

Our company depends on balance and equality — between buyers and sellers, among employees, and in our relationships with customers.

Our mission to evolve car ownership and transform an industry is a challenging one. It can only be achieved by a team of diverse problem-solvers — engineers, designers, business people — from the same broad demographics as our customers.

Why join now?

We’ve built a small but highly talented team backed by >$275 million in funding from investors like DFJ, Goldman Sachs, BMW, and Nissan. In October 2018 we announced a deep partnership and a $140m round led by the third largest auto retailer in the US, Lithia Motors. With strong product-market fit and a great business in California, the next two years will be focused on scaling the business nationally.

Shift is the Bay Area’s #1 seller of used cars with $150 million in cars sold per year. We’re serving most of California and are gearing up to scale to new markets. With a solid business model and no clear winner in our space yet, this is a hugely exciting time to join the team.

Shift is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans status or any other characteristic protected by law.