Director of Product Design

Work Location:  Remote US / Ann Arbor / New York

The Role

ITHAKA is looking for an exceptional leader, mentor, and product designer to become our Director of Product Design for JSTOR, a digital platform used by millions of students and researchers globally. Reporting to the VP of Product & Design, you’ll coach and develop a team of product designers creating an excellent user experience and on-brand UI for the JSTOR platform.

As our Director of Product Design, you will be responsible for hiring, managing, and coaching an empowered, results-oriented team of product designers. You will inspire the team to build thoughtful, easy-to-use experiences that fit seamlessly into the JSTOR platform and exceed user expectations. You will work closely with the VP of Product and key creative and engineering leaders to develop a holistic platform design strategy, including metrics for success. Using your strong background in product design and your proven leadership and coaching skills, you will guide the product design team to develop designs that delight users and are aligned to the overall JSTOR product vision and strategy. To succeed in this role, you should be able to foster a design-oriented culture that emphasizes user delight, evidence-based decision-making, and brand unity. You should be enthusiastic about leading regular design reviews, mentoring and developing the product designers on the team, and continually raising the bar for new achievements. 

Responsibilities

• Staff a team of high-performing product designers, evaluate their skills and performance, and provide strong career- and skill-development support for each team member. 


• Serve as a subject matter expert on JSTOR, the search product landscape, and the needs of ITHAKA users and businesses. 


• Develop a design-centered vision for your department and champion this vision throughout ITHAKA, looking for opportunities to include design focus in the development of content, technology and user experience. 


• Set the creative strategy and direction for ITHAKA products, and build a sustainable product design infrastructure that can support evolution across all ITHAKA product lines.  


• Partner regularly with other senior leaders working on product strategy, providing user-centered design input and ensuring a delightful user experience across the organization. 


• Champion a customer-focused mindset among product teams, leveraging qualitative and quantitative data to better understand our users and delight them with our products.  


• Continuously improve our UI design quality and scalability, working in close partnership with engineering leaders. 


• Model the operational excellence mindset and foster a culture that embraces and reinforces ITHAKA's core values. 

Experience and Skills

• At least 12 years of product UX experience in software product design or website user interface design, with a minimum of 5 years managing and mentoring product designers directly. 


• Track record of delivering great user experience results by collaborating with creative, product, and marketing teams. 


• Portfolio of great digital products that solved user problems—some designed by you, others by teams you led to greatness. 


• Familiarity with agile methods and design review strategies; experience in a Scrum environment a strong plus. 


• Demonstrated success bringing high-quality, effective product designs to market on time and on budget. 


• Experience integrating user research into design practices for continuous, measured improvement. 


• Passion for fostering an inspiring, positive, design-oriented environment that encourages creativity, vision, and evidence-based risk-taking. 


• Dedication to user-centric design. 


• Ability to flex between the high-level strategic picture and evidence-based analysis, with an innate understanding of when to use each skill. 


• Ability to effectively communicate short- and long-term design strategy throughout the organization. 


• Success motivating and managing a design team distributed over multiple locations and helping team members set and achieve satisfying career goals. 


• Working knowledge of search products and library communities is a major plus. 

Work for ITHAKA

We are committed to our organizational values of belonging, evidence, speed, teamwork, and trust.

Our team is passionate about our mission and supporting one another.  We enjoy working together to create opportunities for people to learn and grow out in the world, and we bring that same commitment to helping our teammates develop in our careers and our lives.  One of our core values is belonging. We embrace differences, and believe that the things that make each of us unique are the things that help us see new insights and build better solutions. 

Learn more about Working at ITHAKA.

Apply Now:

Interested candidates can submit their resume, a detailed cover letter, and salary requirements.

We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.  All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, domestic violence victim status, veteran status, disability, history of disability or perceived disability, or other status protected by law. 

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