Director of Design

About Helm

Helm believes that a more equitable world will be built by people with organizing superpowers. To achieve this vision, we are building one seamless and intuitive platform that integrates data, tools, and experiences to give anyone those superpowers. We are designing and executing experiments to better understand human civic behavior, determine which interventions drive impact, and scale them toward a more participatory democracy. Our customers are organizations engaged in political and social advocacy that drive big change over the long-term using a portfolio of strategies on a multi-partisan basis. Most importantly, our customers believe that people organizing in their communities are the ultimate agents of durable change.

Issue advocates and organizers are our inspiration. Building with and for them is our mission. We are assembling a team that shares values with, learns alongside, and stands with the people who are doing the work to change the nation. So if you're highly motivated, super passionate about democracy, and want to join a team that is looking to build great things together, Helm may be for you. Helm is a remote-first company.

About You

A digital design expert (web, desktop, and mobile) who values curiosity, empathy, problem-solving and impact. You’re flexible and eager to contribute to a collaborative team. You can seamlessly integrate work across creative, UI/UX, and front-end development. You are able to quickly interpret product and user needs, integrate them with data-driven insights and observations, and turn them into compelling solutions. You bring people together, learn from those around you, and freely share your knowledge, skills, and context; helping to connect the dots for our team building world-class enterprise software and consumer mobile applications. You’re highly motivated and want to work in a fast-paced, iterative environment. You want to join a team passionate about our democracy that is looking to build great things together.

You can share a portfolio or case study samples that showcase the software products you’ve delivered to market, as well as the design processes that led to their launch. Even better if you have data visualization expertise. 

About the Role

This is a full-time position reporting to the SVP of Science & Innovation and joining a close-knit group of Directors (Product, Research, and Data Science). 

As our hands-on Director of Design, you will play a pivotal role in bringing to life our ambitious product vision for a growing product portfolio including enterprise software tools and mobile apps. Your team will own all design work to help us to build beautiful, intuitive software, craft design systems, market our products, and show off our long-term product vision. As both a coach and a team-player you’ll dive into the weeds wherever needed within the design team work or lend a hand to another team (e.g. creative, branding, marketing, etc.) to help keep the team moving. You’ll help our design team understand the business and product context, constraints, and requirements so they can focus on what drives the most impact; innovating where it drives a key outcome and iterating from prior learnings to not reinvent the wheel. 

What You’ll Do:

• Effectively and empathically lead a team of designers collaborating with cross-functional teams of researchers, product managers, engineers, marketers, and data scientists 
• Integrate multiple product lines into a unified platform strategy through interface design, visual design, user experience design, and visual identity branding
• Collaborate with front end engineering on a global pattern library approach that balances speed and creativity
• Iterate to quickly learn from experiments to put forward new hypotheses, refine early stage product ideas, and deliver actionable insights to Helm teams to improve user experiences
• Understand and champion the broader company vision to support the role design plays in terms of our product roadmap so ideas can be translated into experiences that drive business value
• Collaborate on conversations about our customers, customer journeys, and user experience, making sure that our team has the context they need to understand the problem they are trying to solve
• Moderate design thinking sessions and write clear, consistent, and concise market and user reports to help bring our product vision to life
• Coach our talented design team around all facets of the product design process and help them apply best practices and cutting edge techniques to their work
• Recruit, interview, onboard, and develop designers

Skills you should have:

• Demonstrable design expertise for complex SaaS or consumer products
• Working on teams using Agile software development methodologies
• An understanding of product psychology, behavioral science, and/or HCI
• A strong desire to do design work while also leading a team in their work
• A collaborative spirit, a team-player who is excited to work with and learn from people with different areas of expertise
• A bias for action and the ability to thrive working in fast-paced climates (e.g., start-up or similar)
• A strong commitment to data-driven decision making: welcoming both qualitative and quantitative data on the impact of our products to enrich the iterative design process.
• Ability to recruit, hire, onboard, and lead a design team.

Skills you could have:

• Passion for civic engagement, campaigns, and equitability
• Design expertise in data visualization
• Experience with CRMs, campaigns, and/or civic organizing products
• Training in behavioral science (RCTs, interventions, etc.)
• Training in statistical analysis packages (e.g. R, SAS, Stata, MATLAB, etc.)
• Training in data management and programming languages (SQL, Python, Java, or C) 

Helm is an equal opportunity employer that encourages diversity across all spectrums in its hiring, without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, or any other protected factor. With that being said, we wouldn't be able to accommodate candidates in need of work sponsorship at this time since we are a small company. If you find this role interesting and you hit on the elements above, please apply!