Product Designer

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Hi! 👋 I'm Chris, head of Product Design ’re looking for a versatile, intrinsically motivated designer who is excited to contribute to rethinking how modern software is designed. At Ashby, you'll be part designer, part product manager, part consultant, and part design system manager (or some combination of the 4!). We do design differently here, and if that excites you, read on.

$/yr - $/yr

In my previous roles, product teams always consisted of a product manager, a designer, and ~4-5 engineers. This may sound familiar to you! The product manager briefs the designer who then designs. After designing, mocks are handed to the engineers.

We take a more principled approach here  you've been designing software enough, you'll realize in actuality, design is required in varying degrees on each project. Sometimes in the past, I'd be asked to design yet another settings page, when really all that was needed was an engineer to reuse existing components and just follow some documentation I had written. Other times, I felt I should effectively be the product manager and own a project from beginning to end.

In these latter cases, it made sense that I was even the one providing project updates and managing resources rather than constantly being pinged by a separate product manager.

This principled approach is now what we do here, and it is part of what has allowed Ashby to take down incumbents in multiple verticals all  don't settle for the status quo—we actively resist reversion to the mean.

Talent teams aspire to build a hiring process that identifies great candidates, moves them quickly through the interview process, and provides an excellent experience for the candidate. To accomplish this, recruiters perform thousands of daily tasks to coordinate and relay information between candidates, interviewers, and hiring managers. Teams struggle to keep up! Scheduling a final round is an excellent example of our customers' challenges.

A recruiter needs to collect availability from the candidate, identify potential interviewers, perform “Calendar Tetris” to find who is available to interview the candidate, schedule on the earliest date possible, and perform any last‑minute adjustments as availability changes. They must perform this while considering the interview load on each individual and whether interviewers need to be trained and shadowing others.

Ashby provides talent teams with intelligent and powerful software that provides insights into where they’re failing and automates or simplifies many of the tasks they’re underwater with. We put a lot of effort into designing products that are approachable to beginners but mastered and extended by power users. In many ways, spreadsheets set the bar here (and are what we often replace!).

• 4+ years of product design experience in desktop SaaS.
• Able to think from first principles instead of simply applying the “standard” UX processes.
• Can break down complex user problems by asking questions that narrow down the solution space.
• Enough experience that your intuition can solve many usability problems without having to rely solely on data & metrics or conducting user research.
• Curious & resourceful enough to come up with creative solutions and de‑risk them appropriately.
• Strong skills in layout, navigation, IA, UI, and interaction design.
• Strong visual design skills and obsession with craft & details.
• As a bonus, you have experience at an early‑stage startup or have spent time as a solo designer on a team.

• You feel uncomfortable designing independently without much guidance from a PM or design management.
• You’re uncomfortable having your decisions and process being challenged constantly by engineering & product.
• You prefer an in‑person role over remote (Ashby operates remotely).
• You dislike written documentation.
• You want a set structure and rhythm to your projects.
• PM gives you a brief, you do wireframes, then mocks, then pass off work to engineers. Rinse and repeat.
• You prefer a narrow job scope - interaction design only, design system…