Contract: Senior Content Designer

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to over 30% of the Fortune 100 with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.  

Last year, more than $3.3 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers. 

This is an engagement through Upwork’s Hybrid Workforce Solutions (HWS) Team. Our Hybrid Workforce Solutions Team is a global group of professionals that support Upwork’s business. Our HWS team members are located all over the world.

As a Senior Content Designer, we'll rely on you for your thinking, not just your writing. In fact, a seasoned UXCD knows that writing is the very last mile of the job. You'll facilitate collaboration and use data and research to meet the needs of our users. You'll represent content design across the company, creating better outcomes for the people we serve. You'll do all this as part of a thriving and energetic remote team that has great benefits and values diversity and inclusion.

Content design at Upwork

We use design methods and research to understand user behavior and how it should inform our work. We’re collaborative problem solvers, and our goal is to create better outcomes for the people who use our platform. We own and govern product architecture, logic, and content patterns. We also write usable, useful, and responsible interface content that speaks in the voice of Upwork–a conversation with your mentor over a cup of coffee.

 Work/Project Scope:

• Week three: Onboard and join a cross-functional product team and sync with them. Develop a regular cadence of delivering usable, useful, and responsible content design.
• Week five: Begin delivering on team content design needs; start to prioritize roadmap items with your manager as needed; share work with your content design teammates 
• Week seven: Review impact with team and manager (on above); assess ways to continue moving forward successfully
• General responsibilities:
• Turn complex, ambiguous inputs into clear flows and architecture that aligns with our brand, product design and content design principles
• Communicate your work persuasively, helping a variety of audiences understand and believe in your decisions
• Own a sprint-based backlog of work for your domain, proactively managing your workload and tracking tasks across multiple teams
• Partner closely with your team, which includes design, product management, and engineering
• Write usable, useful, and responsible product copy based on guidelines, research, brand understanding, best practices, and more
• Present your work for critique to other content designers, executives, and your teammates
• Advocate for Upwork's content design practice by establishing new workflows and coaching co-workers
• Lead workshops and co-creation sessions to build shared understanding
• Translate UX research into language that anticipates needs and makes the experience easier to understand
• Get feedback with grace and humility, using it to improve your work and soft skills

Must Haves (Required Skills): 

• A strong understanding of how to apply content design in a product context. This means working in sprints, thinking in terms of flows and interactions rather than static pages, and an understanding of how language works as a system to support users, bring the brand voice and goals forward, and meet users where they are.
• Collaboration as a core value. We need people who are willing to partner with their teams and be flexible. They will need to be sensitive to the needs of their team, and business goals. It’s a big bonus if they’re comfortable facilitating design thinking activities and workshops.
• Knowledge of architecture and taxonomies. Our team must help draw the roadmap that our users traverse. Taxonomy, ontology, logic, architecture, and information hierarchy are essential skill sets.
• Excellent writing skills. Our team also leads writing for our product, and this person will need the skills to represent us well—setting standards that the rest of Upwork will follow, internalizing our brand strategy, product content guidelines, and product voice & tone.
• Seeking a content design team. This person wants to learn from and grow with other content designers. They’re excited about sharing their work and getting thoughtful feedback from other word lovers.
• The ability to conduct research or find data to support their decisions. (this could be partnering with UXR on interviews or by looking through customer support data like chat and call logs). It’s critical that this person is able to challenge their own assumptions and can recognize when they need to change their approach or opinion.

Upwork is proudly committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce. We never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.   

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