Head of Design

Job Description

At Propel, our mission is to build modern, respectful, and effective financial tools for Americans with limited income. Over 5 million people use our app Providers, previously called Fresh EBT, to manage the benefits that keep their family well-fed and healthy, stay up to date on critical government programs, save money and earn income. Read more about the impact of the Providers app here, here, and here. Now we’re expanding further into the financial services space by building a new financial product that will offer the best banking option for low-income Americans.

We’re hiring a Head of Design to lead our design team across all of its functions, including product design, brand design, and design research! This is an outstanding opportunity to build a product with clear and growing user value, with a user constituency you can wake up eager to help every day, and a great team who’ll help you make us the best brand and product in the market. 

We’re looking for an upbeat and impactful leader who has led teams to deliver outstanding user experiences for high-engagement consumer software, build brands that are deeply embodied by the product itself, and conduct design research that drives product and business strategy at the highest levels. In this role, you’ll manage, develop, and grow a multi-disciplinary design team of 14. Your success will depend on your ability to align, motivate, hire and retain great designers of many different types. You’ll also be an equal voice with the VP of Product and VP of Engineering on the direction of the product, and be an advocate for design thinking across the organization.

Propel is a for-profit software company that holds its social mission at its core. Our investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Nyca Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Flourish Ventures, Kevin Durant, Serena Williams, and Nas.

We are strongly committed to hiring a diverse and multicultural team. We encourage applications from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, including those with direct experience with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

We offer:

• Immediate opportunity to make an impact on our team, product, and business
• An opportunity to work on a product used by millions of people
• A get-stuff-done, fun, and caring culture
• Meaningful work and a strong shared sense of mission
• A remote-first work environment with a dog-friendly office in Downtown Brooklyn and satellite offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City
• Propel believes that everyone should be compensated fairly and equitably. We set our salary ranges using compensation data from hundreds of NYC based startups at our stage. Additionally, pay is not determined based on location. The salary range for this position is $240,000 – $275,000 depending on experience. Equity and excellent benefits come with this position as well!

What you’ll do:

• Dramatically improve the quality and velocity of design
• Take the app experience from good to excellent
• Build an iconic brand
• Pick your spots to be hands-on to show versus tell, and know when to give people space to do great work
• Deeply and continuously internalize the needs and voices of the people we serve
• Deeply understand the existing brand, user experience, and research practice
• Build deep trust and strong relationships with the existing design team and other key collaborators across the organization
• Define our standards of excellence and success across all design disciplines. Articulate your definition of a premium user experience, a powerful brand, and a world-class research practice.
• Drive towards excellence by scoping, prioritizing, and implementing improvements to our design process, systems and operations
• Foster a high-trust, creative, and high performance culture
• Hire, grow and retain great design talent

What you have:

• 10+ years of experience leading multiple design teams, including but not limited to: product design, design research, visual design and content design
• You’ve led design for at least one consumer software product operating at scale
• A work portfolio that shows relevant design work. To be considered for this role, a portfolio is required with application submission. If your portfolio is password protected, please include the password.
• Expertise in key design tools and systems for both product design and brand creative 
• Experience leading a team of designers, engineers, and operations folks to prioritize, scope, and ship software
• Excellent, clear, and concise written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to tell a compelling story about design and product strategy
• Background serving our customer segment and/or deep interest in learning about their problems and needs