Director of Design, Wattpad
CA$170-210k
More information about location
Office located in Downtown Toronto
Platform for sharing original writing
Be an early applicant
Platform for sharing original writing
101-200 employees
Be an early applicant
CA$170-210k
More information about location
Office located in Downtown Toronto
101-200 employees
Company mission
Wattpad's mission is to create a world where everyone's story can be heard, and anyone can belong.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience leading and scaling design teams in a product driven organization
- Strong design point of view with the ability to set direction and make hard tradeoffs
- Deep experience shaping end-to-end product experiences across multiple surfaces
- Ability to move fluidly between strategy and hands on execution
- Track record of influencing product direction through design narrative and user insight
- Strong cross functional collaborator who can partner effectively with senior leaders
- Passion for designing for real human needs, delight, and emotional resonance
- Don’t meet all the requirements? Studies show women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs if they do not meet all the qualifications. Therefore, in an effort to build a more diverse workplace, we encourage you to apply anyways. You might actually be the right person or you may be a good fit for a number of other openings we currently have
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Director of Design to lead, grow, and elevate our design organization. This role is responsible for setting a clear design vision and strategy across our products while coaching and developing our team of designers and researchers
- You will shape how design influences product direction by blending strategic direction with hands-on involvement in our most critical design initiatives to deliver intuitive and emotionally resonant experiences for readers, writers, and advertisers
- Design plays a critical role in how users experience our platform and how quickly they reach enjoyment and stay in flow. This role will shape not only what we build, but how we think about building it. You will help ensure that design is a driving force behind clarity, cohesion, and joy in our products
- Lead, coach, and mentor a team of product designers and user researchers and provide active coaching, feedback, and skill development
- Foster a culture of strong design thinking, craft excellence, and accountability to outcomes
- Establish clear expectations for quality, clarity, and impact, while giving teams autonomy in how they get there
- Define and evolve a clear design vision aligned to product strategy and user needs
- Shape cohesive, intuitive experiences across the reader, writer, and ads ecosystems
- Translate ambiguous problem spaces into clear experience direction teams can confidently execute against
- Ensure design decisions ladder to user value, platform goals, and long-term strategy
- Actively contribute to high-impact initiatives and critical product moments
- Partner closely with product and engineering leaders during discovery, definition, and delivery
- Provide strong critique and feedback that raises the bar without prescribing solutions
- Govern and evolve the design system to ensure consistency, scalability, and accessibility
- Balance speed and craft by enabling teams to move fast without compromising quality
- Balance speed and craft, knowing when to push for exploration and when to drive toward execution
- Set clear standards for usability, accessibility, and visual cohesion across surfaces
- Champion the user perspective by ensuring user goals are never abstract or assumed
- Partner with product and research to ensure insights meaningfully shape product direction
- Manage and support the user research team, ensuring research is actionable and strategic
- Use evidence, data, and research to influence decisions and challenge assumptions
- Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Content, Trust and Safety, and Ads to align on experience outcomes and tradeoffs
- Influence product direction through clear design narratives, not just artifacts
- Facilitate design critiques, workshops, and working sessions that move teams toward clarity and alignment
- Drive alignment on priorities, tradeoffs, and outcomes through strong design storytelling
- Advocate for the role of design as a strategic partner, not a downstream function
- Help the organization understand how great design drives engagement, trust, and growth
Application process
- Wattpad is conducting all interviews in a distributed manner using applicable third party software where needed and using visual interface tools such as Google Meet and Zoom
Our take
Content is king and Wattpad has managed to create a platform that aggregates the most loved original writing content in the world, turning the traditional publishing industry on its head.
Where authors used to submit drafts to dozens of publishing houses in the hope of getting some eyeballs on their work, Wattpad opened up the process to millions of young authors by letting them easily submit their work, and fostering a community around their software that offers feedback and help.
The e-reading platform is now looking to double down on its strategy of taking its user-generated fiction and turning it into successful intellectual property upon which original series and movies can be based. However, a significant challenge for Wattpad is in producing original, marketable content from its platform, given the popularity of fanfiction, stories which are based on existing intellectual property.
Another challenge for Wattpad is the current economic conditions, which have affected much of the tech sector and are not sparing digital publishing. Having shelved bold plans for the future, it also laid off 15% of its workforce in March 2023. Having realigned for its current business needs, however, it is now well placed to weather the current market downturn.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Jan 2018
$51m
LATE VC
Apr 2014
$46m
SERIES C
Total funding: $117.8m
Company benefits
- Full health benefits
- Career development & Mentorship opportunities
- RRSP matching
- Generous parental Leave top-up
- Flexible hours
- Regular hackathons
- Healthy snacks & drinks
- Your choice of hardware
- Monthly work-from-home allowance
- Beautiful offices in Toronto and Halifax
- Easy access to transit
Company HQ
St. Lawrence, Toronto, ON
Leadership
Allen lau
(Co-Founder)Lau attended University of Toronto where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering followed by a master's in the same subject. Thereafter he briefly worked as a software engineer for Brightspark before founding his first notable company, Tira Wireless, a mobile development startup. He is also the co-founder of Two Small Fish Ventures, a fund that invests in Toronto and Waterloo-based early-stage internet companies with strong network effects.
Ivan Yuen
(Co-Founder)Prior to Wattpad, Ivan co-founded FeedM8 and served as the company’s CTO. Before that he was one of the first employees of Tira Wireless, where he helped grow the technical team and developed new and emerging wireless technologies. Ivan graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Computer Engineering and also earned an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.
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