What is the type of contract for this position?

The contract for this position is a Full-time contract

Is telecommuting possible for this position?

No, telecommuting is not possible for this position

Lead or Principal Product job at Kong

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

North America Remote (US & Canada) - Eligible for work authorization sponsorship

Are you ready to power the World's connections? Starting with the top open source API gateway, Kong products manage reliable digital connections across APIs, hybrid and multi-cloud environments. APIs are at the forefront of modern software development for companies of all sizes, and we are passionate about building products to support our users - developers, operators, and enterprise architects - to master application API deployment and integrations.

Kong is a fully distributed team with an HQ office in San Francisco. The Product Design team currently has members in San Francisco, Vancouver, New York, and Mexico. This role is remote and open to US and Canadian applicants. The role is eligible for work authorization sponsorship.

This role will be the most senior hands-on designer on the Product Design Team working closely with the Product Design Director. This role will have a significant opportunity to not only drive designs for our products, but impact our overall product design practices, culture, and strategy at the company, team, and product level. Great user experiences, including usability, of our software products is critical to the success of our Kong and the Product Design Team at Kong plays a key role in driving such. The Product Design team is part of a multi-disciplinary Product Team that includes practices for Product Design, Product Management, Documentation, and Developer Relations. Our executive leadership team is passionate about great design and have put significant investment into the team. There are many product design initiatives and opportunities underway at Kong we are excited about as we scale up the Product Design Team and we are looking for great teammates to join us on this journey!

What You'll Be Doing

Practice Leadership. Work closely with designers, product managers, engineers, and other disciplines to create a design vision across products, specific products, and key features. Act as a craft leader promoting product design within the company and publicly. Identify and address tool chain and design process improvements.
Holistic UX Design. Passion for end-to-end user journeys. Drive connections and ensure consistency across a portfolio of multiple products.
Visual Design Leadership. You can wear a creative director hat to drive mock-ups that match your good eye. You can help the team develop an understanding of how to align to your stunning design aesthetic using foundational elements like layout, color, type, and graphics.
Design System. Responsibility for innovation, evangelization, maintenance, and uptake of consistent design standards in our growing design system, and play a key role in leading design system efforts.
Team Mentorship. Help mentor and coach new & immediate members of the design team, looking for growth opportunities and leading by example. Drive key internal and external design reviews.
User Research & Product Analytics. Scale up our qualitative & quantitative user research practice with standard processes, measurement plans, and product goals. Build out a culture that our user research findings can be actively shared to influence not only our designs in progress, but product and company direction as well.
Advocate for Accessibility. Creates inclusive designs for all users, encouraging product and engineering management to prioritize accessible features and bug fixes.

What You'll Bring

Experience
7+ years of related experience, ideally in B2B SaaS products or similar.
Product design portfolio required. Portfolio demonstrates an understanding of the design process, user research and design’s impact on business goals.
Strong software development lifecycle experience. Extensive working knowledge of working with product managers, engineers and other key teams with a strong understanding of how designs go from concept to code to production.
Experience developing software that is global in reach, universal in design, and designed for users of multiple abilities.
Be able to review coded designs for design quality before release, zooming in at component level issues all the way to zooming out across products.
Experienced in systems thinking; ability to step back and see a project’s larger ecosystem, with a focus on solutions that improve not just one feature but the entire user flow.
BA/BS or MA/MS in design, computing, psychology, or related field, or equivalent experience

Process
Has a demonstrated advocacy for human-centered design and research methodologies, and is proficient in running quantitative and qualitative research, such as usability testing, product analytics tooling, and interviews. Using documentation, reviews, and presentations, communicate clear and compelling ideas to a wide range of key stakeholders.
Ability to distill and reframe a problems, then define a framework for resolution, generating clear, elegant solutions for complex challenges.

Mindset
Self-motivation; ability to produce results both independently and as part of a team.
Demonstrated behaviors, attitudes, actions, and judgements that inspire employees to follow and other leaders to trust.
An internal compass that points toward ethics and equality, and the conviction to speak up when we veer off course.

You Might Work On

Kong Konnect — A service connectivity platform for multi-cloud environments
Kong Gateway — The world’s most popular and open source API gateway
Kong Mesh — An enterprise-grade service mesh
Insomnia — A popular platform for API spec testing, debugging, and publishing
Kongponents— Our UI component library that is fundamental to our full design system

Diversity & Inclusion

If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria above but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.
Candidates from untraditional academic backgrounds such as boot camps and internships are welcome.

Why should you want to work at Kong?

Market Opportunity - We are on a quest to build a $10b+ software company over the next few years and need YOUR help!

- APIs are driving innovation across every industry!

- Strong VC team, Series D, strong year over year revenue growth!

Technical Leadership - We are recognized as the leader in innovation in the connectivity space.

- Marco, our CTO/co-founder - “We are the Cisco of L4 and L7” - CUBE Conversation, March 2021

- We are the leading innovator in the connectivity space!

Amazing Team & Culture - Come be a "Konger" and find out what we mean.

- Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021

- Kong employees discuss our culture at our 2020 Company Kickoff

Building Great Products - Learn why the world's largest companies love our tech!

- Kong Named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant

- Over 250m+ downloads of our open source API gateway! Over 40k+ stars on Github between Kong API and Kong Insomnia!

What is a Konger? (see our company values below…)

We are a group of makers, thinkers, and doers focused on helping today’s developers build tomorrow’s technology. Our teams work on the bleeding edge of API innovation to provide our users with a central nervous system for data and services.

We put design at the heart of everything we do, and we’re relentlessly focused on creating beautiful experiences for our customers. That’s why technology companies, major banks, e-commerce innovators, and government agencies put Kong in front of their most important web applications.

We believe in the power of Open Source and everything it stands for. That’s why developers around the world enthusiastically contribute on top of our open-source platform.

We are passionate about solving challenges that will fundamentally shape the future of technology, and we’re looking for the right people to join us on our mission. If you believe in taking ownership of your work, making an impact, and having fun along the way, we would love to talk to you.

Kong Core Values:

Be Inclusive. We work together from anywhere to achieve our common goals. Our differences make us stronger.

Be Authentic. We are genuine, principled and confident without arrogance. Show respect and kindness, especially in tough moments.

Be Relentlessly Resourceful. We work with purpose, obsession and grit. It takes muscle to do hard things and doing hard things build muscle.

Be Customer Obsessed. We care. Customers are everything, we put them at the center of everything you do. We are all empowered to make an impact.

Be Curious. We value ideas over hierarchy. Never accept the status quo. We make bold bets, fail, and learn everyday. There is always a way.

Be an Owner. We are drivers not passengers and own the quality and outcomes of our work.

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Lead or Principal Product Designer

What You'll Be Doing

What You'll Bring

You Might Work On

Diversity & Inclusion

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