Senior Product Designer

Job Description
Be a part of the solution. SmartNews is dedicated to the idea that people make better decisions when provided with better information. Join us as we work to escape the filter bubble, strengthen democracy, and help people be better informed. Already the #1 news app in Japan, SmartNews is focused on global growth. Were looking for exceptional product designers who want to join our team and build the worlds greatest news app

About You
You are passionate about creating holistic experiences for users from all different walks of life. You are open-minded, have a thirst to learn, and are energized by close and collaborative work with a diverse set of peers. You are mobile-first in your design approach, capable of rallying your peers around a concept. You are comfortable aligning design with the business goals, defining a strategy, and leading your team through flawless execution. You're a natural communicator, comfortable sharing your opinion, and thrive in ambiguous situations. You believe that design is a strategic differentiator and, when done well, guides the relationships between people and products effortlessly to beat our goals. Lastly, you know that design is fundamentally about understanding people and problem solving and have experience turning those understandings into successful products.

Responsibilities

• Design - Lead end to end design efforts for high profile and ambiguous products
• Partnerships - Collaborate with cross-functional partner teams to develop industry leading product solutions for news media
• Communications - Share and present concepts, designs, ideations, prototypes and design decisions to a wide range of stakeholders and partners
• Leadership - develop best in class design practices capable of scaling broadly and advocacy within the company
• Prioritization - balance competing responsibilities for products throughout the explore, expand and extract S-curve with intentionality and clarity of purpose
• Focus - execute on the scope and complexity of product work while building on the integrity of the design principles and user needs

Requirements

Minimum Requirements

• Integritous, quality human being with a belief in the mission and a hunger to improve our collective understandings of the world and each other through peoples access to quality information
• Highly skilled designer with excellent attention to detail, pride in our craft, depth of product thinking, and mastery of common design prototyping tools
• Minimum of 5 years experience with proven track record leading product design on multi-disciplinary product teams building mobile products at scale
• Experience leading ideation sessions, building collaborative and shared product visions, aligning product and design principles and successfully influencing product teams strategies and goals.
• Strong communicator capable of representing teams strategy broadly, leading executive level design reviews, and keeping teams informed of design decisions and opportunities
• Self-directed and with a bias towards designing, you are comfortable managing tradeoffs, prioritizing tasks, and have developed frameworks for doing so
• Ability to provide clear, honest and objective feedback to make your partners and peers better. Open-minded and capable of embracing feedback from others to improve your designs and process.
• Strong sense of accountability to the broader design community, capable of mentoring designers and interns
  

Nice to Haves

• Knowledge of programming, mobile iOS or Android, or HTML/CSS/Javascript
• Multidisciplinary background such as Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Sociology, Comp. Sci, Data Vis, or Anthropology
• Experience managing or mentoring designers and building a design team. This role has potential to grow to be a leadership management role.
• Can speak Japanese

Benefits

• Equity included
• 100% medical, dental and vision insurance coverage (60% coverage for dependents)
• Monthly commute, mobile phone and gym allowances
• 401k matching program
• Free lunch, snacks, drinks, etc.
• Pet friendly office