Director of Product Design and Research, Stack Overflow
$190-250k
Public Q&A platform for developers
Be an early applicant
Public Q&A platform for developers
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$190-250k
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To empower the world to develop technology through collective knowledge.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ years of product design experience with a portfolio that demonstrates exceptional design craft and strong end-to-end product thinking
- 4+ years leading and managing design and/or teams at a product company,
- Background in B2B or enterprise products, ideally at an AI-native company or one that has strongly pivoted to AI; developer tooling experience a plus
- A track record of people management that is honest and trust-based
- Demonstrated ability to fight for your team’s careers, workload, and recognition, not just their output
- The ability to maintain a clear perspective on what your team needs in a high-pressure, fast-moving environment
- Fluency in how AI is changing product surfaces, not just as a tool in the design workflow but also experience designing for ai-native or ai-augmented products
- Experience designing for AI-native or AI-augmented products, with an understanding of the unique UX challenges they present
- Comfortable working at the intersection of design and code; you understand functional prototyping and know how to develop that capability in a team without losing people who aren’t there yet
- Exceptional UI and visual design judgement and the ability to hold the team accountable to a high level of craft
- Experience deploying research strategically and making findings visible and actionable across a product organization
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate design rationale and influence across various stakeholders
What the job involves
- The design problems that come with this are genuinely hard. Without a traditional UI, the experience lives inside chat responses, API calls, and contexts we don’t fully own which means design here is heavily weighted toward information architecture, content strategy, and the quality of language. We’re shipping at a pace that requires designers to work closer to code than ever before and that expectation will only grow
- The Director of Product Design and Research owns how the product looks, feels, works, and how we know if it’s working for users. You’ll report to the CPTO, shape strategy at the leadership level, and stay close enough to the work to raise its quality and support and advocate on behalf of the people doing it
- The team is experienced, capable, and already oriented in this direction. They don’t need rebuilding. They need a leader who will help them work with confidence, maintain craft standards under speed and pressure while adopting new ways of working and advocating for the team when it matters
- Own and uphold how design and research work at Stack Overflow include the process, tooling, standards, and craft
- Own the user experience perspective on how technologists discover and interact with knowledge, and make the ux calls that shape where the product goes
- Maintain the highest standards of design craft and research quality across every product surface
- Evolve the team’s AI-first design practice as the technology changes, maintaining the pipeline from concept to working, production-ready code
- Own and run the team rituals that elevate quality and develop designers and researchers
- Coach designers and researchers in their career growth, developing both skill and leadership across the team
- Build a high-trust, feedback driven culture that gives people real autonomy and holds them accountable to their work
- Be a coauthor of our product strategy iand be a vocal advocate for our users and customers to ensure their needs are adequatey represented
- Work alongside Product and Engineering leaders as part of the EPD leadership team, contribution to how we build software in an AI-first world
- Build and maintain research infrastructure that actually drives decisions, not just informs them
Our take
Stack Overflow is one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide: a Q&A style forum for developers, gamified with upvotes, downvotes, and badges, with over 14 million registered users and upwards of 21 million questions. It's grown to become a go-to resource in the community.
The site has proven a good springboard into providing other knowledge sharing services too - most notable among which is the company’s teams platform. This, along with advertising and jobs listings make for a strong revenue model that saw the company valued at well over $1B when it was acquired back in 2021.
This pricey acquisition means Stack Overflow has a secure buffer it can use to expand. This is taking the form of partnerships with Google Cloud to boost GenAI capabilities, growing its global product audience so it can boost revenue - as things stand, its team's platform is used mainly in the US. If Stack Overflow can get a foothold in developing countries like India and Brazil, it could continue its strong history of impressive growth.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
38% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Jul 2020
$85m
SERIES E
Sep 2015
$40m
SERIES D
Total funding: $209.1m
Company benefits
- Focus on well-being: We provide full health coverage for you and your family. That means that Stack Overflow pays 100% of your premiums. Additionally, we provide supplemental benefits such as telemedicine options
- Out of state care: We will reimburse up to $5,000 annually for the participant undergoing treatment or a procedure considered unlawful within their home state, plus a companion
- Work where you want: We have a remote-friendly culture. Before the pandemic we were 40% remote. Today, we’re over 80% permanently remote and won’t require employees to return to an office if they don’t want to. We believe people do their best work when they love where they work
- Work how you want: While we’re fully remote, we’re supporting all employees with home office reimbursements and internet stipends. We also encourage employees to set their working hours on their calendar and in Slack to encourage flexibility
- Take care of loved ones: We offer paid parental leave, a meal stipend, and the primary caregiver has the option to come back to work part time for up to one year. We also have a special caregiver policy due to the pandemic
- Keep learning & growing: Access to a personal and professional coach on a 1:1 basis to help develop your career. Additionally, all employees have annual tuition reimbursement, professional development budget for continuing education, conferences, and memberships, in order to advance their skills and knowledge
- Stay fit & have fun: We provide employees monthly fitness reimbursements as well as host regular yoga and meditation classes during the work day. That’s in addition to regular virtual cooking classes, “bev bashes” (what we call happy hours), and more
- Stack Gives Back: We care deeply for our employees and provide paid time off to encourage their voluntary involvement in and support of programs that positively impact the quality of life within the communities in which we live
Company HQ
Financial District, New York, NY
Leadership
Previously a VP at Barclay's Investment Bank. They then worked their way through various senior-level positions at Rackspace Technology, ultimately serving as SVP & GM of Cloud and Infrastructure Services.
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