What is the type of contract for this position?

The contract for this position is a Full-time contract

What's the salary range for the Product Design Manager, North America position?

The suggested salary for this position is $202,500-$247,500*

Is telecommuting possible for this position?

Yes, telecommuting is possible for this position

Product Design Manager, North job at HappyCo

HappyCo is a company where people can grow their careers and work with like minded people, with no egos or politics. HappyCo is values driven and offers a flexible, supportive culture. Join HappyCo and Make Work Happy!

At HappyCo (happy.co), we’re building simple solutions that deliver real happiness to real people, while reimagining property management. To enable this, we’re looking for an experienced Product Design Manager that possesses exceptional design, communication and people management skills.

As Product Design Manager, you will lead and manage several product designers embedded across multiple teams to ensure our products and features deliver value to our customers through intuitive, easy to use solutions that are of the highest level of craft and execution. In this role, you’ll have the opportunity to drive impact through strong design leadership across a wide range of innovative products in PropTech and FinTech including virtual maintenance, internal tooling, lending, leasing and payments.

You’ll be expected to have a high level of understanding of product and business strategy, and work seamlessly with counterparts in product management, engineering, sales, marketing and other disciplines. You’ll define strategy, operations and communications to enable and guide a team of designers to build great products that not only address real user needs but also create experiences that our customers will love. In this role, you’ll leverage and utilize your deep skillset in people management across the full gamut of Product Design including product strategy, user research, interaction design and visual design.

As a foundational member of our Product Design leadership team, you’ll be instrumental in growing the maturity of our Design organization. You’ll work closely with the Director of Design and other Design Managers to shape and evolve design principles, operations, and processes to drive efficiency and quality standards. Above all, you’ll help foster a rewarding and fun environment where customer centricity underpins innovation and creativity.

One of your strengths will be your ability to mentor, coach and multiply the impact of your direct reports — their success will be your success — contributing and building upon a strong culture of learning, connectedness and happiness. To achieve this, you’ll have excellent communication skills to inspire and lead your team.

During your first two weeks, you will

Get to know our leadership, culture, and valuesComplete our HappyCo orientation and onboarding program
Onboard with the design team, your direct reports and the greater Product, Design and Engineering (PDE) organization
Familiarize yourself with our tools (pssst: we use Figma and Dovetail)
Read our favorite industry primers
Attend your first Company Wide Meeting and Product Update Meetings (rotating bi-weekly)

During your first six weeks, you will

Work with your embedded Product Designers to deliver on a customer outcome leveraging design thinking processes
Get acquainted with the current state of our design operations and design system
Acquire industry knowledge and understand our product strategy and vision
Develop strong connections with your direct reports and establish ongoing 1:1 check ins
Work with your manager to set goals and priorities

During your first six months, you will

Contribute effectively to design team culture through leadership, coaching, mentorship and raise the bar for quality, efficiency and scalability
Contribute to the development and refinement of design operations, team processes and Product Design strategy and vision
Identify opportunities for high potential and high performers and create growth plans for your direct reports
Assist with the growth of the North American Design team through recruitment and talent acquisition initiatives such as community based events or thought leadership
Visit our customers to gain important contextual information to build deep understanding of their day-to-day operations, their roles and scope of their responsibilities

What you could expect day-to-day

Collaborate, mentor and coach Product Designers within their respective product teams to deliver on outcomes through customer research and validation, rapid iteration and usability testing, development of flows and wireframes, high fidelity mockups and rapid prototyping
Meet with customers to build industry knowledge and contribute to generative and evaluative studies and establish processes to inform decisions and improve our research repository
Facilitate and connect with Product Designers via critiques, design pairing or working sessions to foster innovation and creativity, solve operational issues, level up process, craft and execution and to maintain a cohesive product experience across all HappyCo products
Meet with a direct report to provide constructive feedback that contributes to their growth and success
Establish new processes, playbooks and rituals to ensure alignment and scalability of the greater Design team

What we think you should have to be successful

3+ years experience leading a team of Product Designers as a people manager
8+ years of Product Design experience working closely with product managers and engineers covering product discovery techniques, rapid iteration and prototyping through to execution and shipping
Strong at design craft demonstrated in a results-driven portfolio composed of compelling solutions that solve complex real world problems. While this is not an IC (individual contributor) role at a product team level, it’s critical that you’ll be able to lead Product Designers to quality execution and coach on skill development. You’ll still be expected to ’get your hands dirty’ and help push work forward when necessary
A leader in conducting customer research and usability testing, and setting outcome based goals
While not a hard requirement, extensive experience in enterprise or B2B software is an advantage
Experience working within a tech-based design role and the ability to work closely with leadership teams, product managers, software engineers, customer success, sales and marketing to deliver outcome based goals
Motivated by people-centric design processes and a desire to create happiness through delightful experiences
Experience building tokenized design systems including their creation, contribution models, documentation and approaches to scaling
Available to work closely with the North American Product Design team across US time zones (PST–EST), with the flexibility to connect with Australian based Design leadership and broader Design and PDE team

Keys to optimum happiness at HappyCo

A customer centric mindset with critical business evaluation skills
Ability to think in systems; seeing the big picture and the little details at the same time
A bias for action; pushing forward in ambiguity while striving for clarity
Empowering teams instead of enforcing standards
Leveraging technology to serve humanity in a way that is accessible to all
Strong servant leadership principles to guide and uphold high standards of culture, quality and creativity

Our Benefits

Work from anywhere!

Opportunity to work for one of the fastest growing technology companies in the PropTech industry

Generous paid parental leave

Unlimited time off

Monthly stipends to support Wellness and Home Office expenses

Find out more about our US benefits here!

#LI-Remote

#LI-DNI

About HappyCo

Founded in 2011, HappyCo (happy.co) builds mobile and cloud solutions to enable real-time property data. Our flagship product suite 'Happy Property’ has 2.7M units on its platform and has captured more than 270 million photos. We’re everyday people with a shared purpose — improving people’s lives. Our team is made up of thinkers, talkers, planners, makers, builders and everything in between. Together, we’re turning our passions into happier communities! When customers use our software, their communities get stronger. Our tools empower everyone in multifamily property management to improve their operations and maximize returns, which means they’re building better experiences for their residents. When property people are happy, we’re happy. That’s why we’re HappyCo. Learn more about our Product Vision here!

Our HappyCo Culture

HappyCo strives to build better communities. So naturally, we are dedicated to making our own community an enjoyable place that lets us do our best work. We’re devoted to building an inclusive, supportive culture that empowers each HappyCo’er to succeed and grow. To learn more about our culture, check out our Glassdoor page and our careers page!

We believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive, and building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company is core to our mission. Our goal is to ensure that HappyCo upholds an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are applying for an open position or working at the company. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, and veteran status. HappyCo is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures.

A note to Recruitment Agencies: Please don’t reach out to us about our roles -- we’ve got it covered. We don’t accept unsolicited agency resumes and HappyCo is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

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Product Design Manager, North America