Senior Director of Design and Research, Upside
$216-270k
+ Potential Bonus + Equity
2 days a week in office
Mobile reward application for retail spending
Open for applications
Mobile reward application for retail spending
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$216-270k
+ Potential Bonus + Equity
2 days a week in office
201-500 employees
Company mission
To advance the economic power of people living and working in the real world.
Role
Who you are
- You have 10+ years of professional design experience and 5+ years managing and leading design and research teams
- You have brought a customer focus to high-impact, high-visibility projects
- You excel at written and verbal communication and use these skills to persuade and influence stakeholders toward building innovative products that uniquely resonate with customers
- You work collaboratively with Engineering, Product, and Marketing team members to drive strategy and design execution
- You have led, recruited, and scaled design teams at both startups and established companies
- You have experience systematically growing product designer and researcher skills
- Experience using UX to influence strategic decision making, communicate strategic concepts, and facilitate understanding
- Experience translating ambiguous asks and directions into clear user centric approaches
- Experience fostering divergent design thinking and shepherding radical ideas that can truly evolve products
- Experience with organizational transformation and design education to foster team growth
- Provide consultation of key team-level research, insights, and product strategy to drive quality and cohesion
- Set the standard and foster a culture for UX design practice not only as a means to delivering solutions, but as a way of deepening understanding and driving strategic conversations in a complex problem space
What the job involves
- The D&R teams are a diverse group of individuals who are unified by a common vision - Build first class user experiences for both our consumers and merchants to enable Upside's business
- We are a small tightly knit team that has individuals embedded into engineering delivery teams. We work together across teams to maintain our design systems and principles and build amazing products
- Collaborate with engineering and product to enable key strategic initiatives
- Manage a diverse team in establishing and maintaining Upside's Design Principles and Vision
- Work with Research and Development leadership to improve and build the future of Upside
- Incorporate systems thinking into Upside's Design System so that they are both modular and stand-alone full-featured product experiences that are both powerful and easy to use
- Create a culture of craft, quality, and execution by inspiring, motivating, and leading product designers across experience levels
- Work closely with our Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, and executive leadership to deliver best-in-class, innovative work
- Own emergent, highly complex, and ambiguous opportunities from inception to a landed proposal. Frame opportunities, potential experience solutions, and drive initiative direction in partnership with research, prototyping, and product peers
- Hone Upside’s research practice and deepen its integrations into our decision making mechanisms
Our take
Loyalty systems, vouchers, and other special offers have a proven track record at winning over new customers for businesses. However customers can be reluctant to sign up due to the sheer number of these schemes. Upside exists to unify these loyalty schemes with a single flexible reward app.
While retail reward platforms are nothing new, Upside functions more like a marketplace, linking participating businesses to potential customers. It also rewards customers with cash back on eligible purchases, a more flexible reward than is traditional in loyalty schemes. With over 50,000 businesses enrolled and 30 million app users, Upside has grown into a major player in this sector.
Having secured investments in a 2022 round of equity funding, Upside expanded into mobile payments, growing its value to over $1.5 billion. Upside is moving to scale its operations by hiring additional talent and forming new partnerships with brands and businesses. As growing inflation impacts the cost of living, Upside's product will likely be increasingly appreciated by consumers and businesses who depend on their custom.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (1 round)
Apr 2022
$65m
SERIES D
Total funding: $65m
Company benefits
- Health and Wellness - We’re happy to provide our team members with generous health, vision, and dental insurance options
- Lunch - We cover the cost of lunch everyday for team members onsite to enhance our team building and encourage collaboration. Plus local restaurants appreciate it!
- Stock Options - Our team’s success is our company’s success, and we should all have a stake in that. We’re glad to offer our team members valuable stock options
- Unlimited PTO - Yes, you read that right. When you need time off, we’ve got you covered
Company values
- Empathetic - We enjoy learning from our users, merchants and teammates in an effort to improve every day. We thoughtfully build products that add value and seamlessly become part of your every day
- Genuine - We are passionate about our mission to help people & businesses thrive. We are our authentic selves, inside and outside the office
- Diverse - We are deliberate about building a diverse workforce, and value the richness that different perspectives bring. We appreciate that diversity spans multiple dimensions — racial, cultural, socio-economic, educational, opinion-based, and more
- Supportive - We prioritize relationships with our users, merchants, and within our team. We embrace our individuality, accept one another, and appreciate each person’s contribution to our mission
- Transparent - We are open with our merchants, users, and fellow team members about all aspects of our business. We are open about company successes and failures, and socialize issues to collectively problem-solve
- Impactful - We are motivated by the impact our work has on the world. We are thoughtful and deliberate about the way forward, and use data to guide our decisions
Company HQ
Dupont Circle, Washington, DC
Articles
Leadership
Alex Kinnier
(CEO & Co-Founder)Experience as Group Product Manager for Google from 2005 to 2008. Senior Vice President of Products and Engineering for Opower from 2012 to 2015.
Wayne Lin
(CPO & Co-Founder)Experience as Product Manager for Google from 2005 to 2010. Vice President of Product Management & Analytics for Opower from 2010 to 2015.
Rick McPhee
(Co-Founder)Experience as Vice President of Engineering for HP's Fortify Software from 2008 to 2012. Senior Vice President of Engineering for Opower from 2012 to 2015.
Joanna Kochaniak
(Co-Founder)Experience as Programmer Analyst for the Institute for Physical Sciences from 2007 to 2010. Lead Software Engineer for Opower from 2010 to 2015.
Jan Rubio
(Designer & Co-Founder)Experience as Research Assistant for George Washington University from 2009 to 2011. Senior Software Engineer for Opower from 2011 to 2016.
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