Design Lead, Design Systems

#TeamNextdoor

Nextdoor is where you connect to the neighborhoods that matter to you so you can belong. Our purpose is to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on.

Neighbors around the world turn to Nextdoor daily to receive trusted information, give and get help, get things done, and build real-world connections with those nearby — neighbors, businesses, and public services. Today, neighbors rely on Nextdoor in more than 305,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries.

Meet Your Future Neighbors

As the Lead for Blocks, Nextdoor’s Design System, you’ll be a part of pillar leadership and manage a small team of designers focused on ensuring that Nextdoor is an engaging realtime community for both Neighbors and paying customers. In this role, you’ll oversee the digital tools and standards that empower designers and engineers to rapidly build more comprehensive features for Nextdoor. You’ll also manage the team and the framework, scale the framework and establish governance, define success metrics and optimize process workflow across cross-functional partnerships, and deliver high quality experiences across all platforms to shape the future of the Nextdoor product as we grow. You’re willing to roll-up your sleeves to move the work, and as excited to shape the strategy and the design vision as you are to get into crafting the details and shipping product. 

You’re mission-oriented, deeply human-centered, and passionate about creating digital experiences that bring people closer in real life. You’re fascinated by neighborhood dynamics and human behavior and excited to design tools that empower neighbors to build stronger communities and transform how people connect and engage with their local area. You’re ever-curious and let new insights change your mind and inspire new solutions. In this role, you’ll help define the Nextdoor product experience and guide your team towards building a robust system framework and product language that enables people to build neighborhood relationships. You’ll work cross-functionally and across multiple platforms to shape the future of the Nextdoor product as we continue to grow.

The Impact You’ll Make

If you want the challenge of fast-paced growth, the satisfaction of seeing your design work come to life, and the pride in helping grow a world-class design team, this is the place for you. Please include a link to your portfolio in addition to your resume and cover letter. 

Role responsibilities:

• Guide a team of designers, helping them grow in their craft and career
• Mentor and manage a team of designers on the Blocks Design Systems team, and act as a liaison between our design and all cross-functional partners
• Partner with senior product management and engineering to shape the strategy for both Blocks and the brand components, while also leading a team of designers in articulating and implementing the vision
• Envision, design, and ship delightful, user-centered, cross-platform experiences that build the fabric of local communities around the globe
• Be involved in all aspects of the product development for a major product area; from strategy, research, prototyping, concept to interaction design, to final QA and code tweaks right before launch
• Lead cross-functional brainstorms, discussions, design reviews and inspiring design team activities
• Take on challenging projects and turn them into designs that are intuitive, accessible, and user-friendly
• Advance the standard for craft on our team. Ensure design consistency and quality across all platforms and devices as we mature our design system
• Define and create new experiences to shape the future of the Nextdoor product as we continue to grow
• Work with partners across design, research, product, engineering, marketing, and brand to maintain consistency of Nextdoor’s product language across all our platforms

What You’ll Bring To The Team

• 10+ years demonstrated experience shipping great mobile products in an agile environment
• Expert level experience building design systems in Figma or Sketch, and related development tools (Storybook, DSM)
• A proven leader across the product development cycle: from strategy and research to synthesis and ideation; from going wide to explore many divergent concepts to focusing and honing in on the pixel-level details; from roadmapping to front-end development and implementation
• An excellent communicator and committed partner that’s able to balance business outcomes with team needs and healthy, productive cross-functional relationships 
• A supportive approach to leadership and growing designers’ careers
• A strong visual design sense and typographic skills, and the ability to design within, and help define, visual guidelines
• Fluency with responsive mobile and web design principles and best practices
• Ability to create rich interactive prototypes with Framer, Origami, or similar
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Swift, Java, or Xcode
• Excellent UX, interaction, and visual design skills
• Proficiency in designing across multiple platforms (iOS, Android, Desktop, Mobile Web)
• Detail-oriented and able to iterate on designs based on user feedback and data
• Defines the design process and can lead others through it
• Comfort working across the product development spectrum: strategy, ideation, concept work, pixel-level details, and front-end development and implementation
• Strong stakeholder management skills, help the team navigate ambiguity and set the vision and strategy
• Strong sense of empathy for customer needs and insights as well as an intuitive grasp of the business problems we’re solving
• Deep curiosity about empowering neighbors to strengthen communities, understanding how local businesses enhance their communities, and what makes neighborhoods around the world thrive

Rewards

Compensation, benefits, perks, and recognition programs at Nextdoor come together to create one overall rewards package.

The starting salary for this role is expected to range from $140,000 to $230,000 on an annualized basis, or potentially greater in the event that your 'level' of proficiency exceeds the level expected for the role. Compensation may also vary by geography.

We also expect to award a meaningful equity grant for this role. With equal quarterly vesting, your first vest date would be within the first 3 months of your start date.

Overall, total compensation will vary depending on your relevant skills, experience, and qualifications. We have you covered! Nextdoor employees can choose between a variety of great health plans. We cover 100% of your personal monthly premium for health, dental, and vision – and provide a OneMedical membership for concierge care.

At Nextdoor, we empower our employees to build stronger local communities. To create a platform where all feel welcome, we want our workforce to reflect the diversity of the neighbors we seek to serve. We encourage everyone interested in our purpose to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. In accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we always consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.