The New York Times is hiringUX/UI Designer

Mission Overview & Responsibilities: Join the team making sophisticated and playful puzzle games that people love.

The Games team of The New York Times — the group behind Wordle, Spelling Bee, the daily crossword, and more — is looking for a UX/UI Designer (Product Designer) to focus on new game demos, betas, and launches. You will be part of the team that designs new game concepts within our standard pipeline, and you will also help improve the experience of existing games.

This is an individual contributor role. At The Times, UX/UI Designers are not only focused on partnering with cross-functional teams, but learning about our products and sharpening their design skills from senior designers on the team. As a UX/UI Designer, you'll build the design of features that lead to hitting company and our team goals, and see them through a release cycle.

You will report to the Director of Product Design for Games. The Games team is based in our NYC Times Square office. The Times is a hybrid workplace and we plan to speak with all candidates about where they're based and how they work in a hybrid environment. This is a remote or hybrid role. 

We value an environment of learning and collaboration. You'll cultivate your craft skills with the support of fellow designers, attending regular design rituals where you'll receive and provide critique, and identify opportunities for consistency across the function.

You will partner with game designers, engineers, producers, and product management to bring new game ideas through all phases of the greenlight process and improve game experiences with different levels of fidelity throughout all phases of the game launch process. You bring your expertise on user experience, interaction design, visual design, and knowledge of usability principles and techniques throughout the prototyping process to:

• Collaborate with game designers to improve game demos and approved concepts by creating a clear user experience communicating goals and providing satisfying feedback resulting in fun, easy-to-use, new games.
• Create production-ready design deliverables, partnering with Engineers to ensure proper implementation.
• Partner with user researchers and data analysts to identify pain points, develop research-backed hypotheses, and surface opportunities for improvement. Use quantitative data and qualitative research to inform your design decisions.
• Support high-level game strategy from a visual design and UX perspective, ensuring we're asking the right questions and solving for distinct needs.

Basic Qualifications: 

• 3+ years designing digital interactive experiences for entertainment or games.
• A portfolio of work that showcases your problem-solving process along with finished design work. Applications without portfolios will not be considered.
• Proficient with gameplay affordances, experience with clear satisfying and delightful UI and UX along with a knowledge of play and what makes digital experiences exciting, fun, and repeatable.
• Must be comfortable working lean and fast in a low fidelity way, while also having the ability to to create highly detailed production ready work in later phases of the project.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Enthusiasm for puzzle games and the mission of The New York Times.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, can work in a range of doneness (quality)
• You have experience documenting and delivering UI screens and specifications to engineers