UX Design Manager

Headquartered in Helsinki with offices in Berlin, Sydney, and Toronto, Aiven provides managed open-source data technologies, such as PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka, and M3, on all major clouds. We have raised Series-C funding totaling $160M and are backed by world-class investors including Atomico, IVP and Earlybird Venture Capital, among others. With a recent valuation of $2B, we have become one of the tech world’s most recent unicorns.Our roots are in open source. The services we provide are based on best-in-class open source data technologies. We are establishing the Open-Source Office that will coordinate and increase our contributions to the open-source community. Through Aiven, developers can do what they do best: create applications. Meanwhile, we do what we do best; manage cloud data infrastructure. We enable our customers to drive business results from open-source resulting in true transformations far beyond their own backyards.

At Aiven, we turn to top Open Source data technologies into frustration-free cloud services to serve the needs of customers of all sizes. Today, we offer nine fully-managed services - Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Apache Cassandra, Redis, M3, InfluxDB, and Grafana that work across major cloud providers such as Google, Amazon, Azure, and more. Our philosophy is to automate everything and avoid repetitive manual work in everything we do. Our technology stack includes Python with bits of Java, Go and C for backend systems, React, and Redux for the frontend.

We are now looking for a passionate UX Design Manager within our growing design department. Your team will be focussed on providing the best user experience for developers working with our managed services thru Aiven Console.

The position is open to candidates in the Helsinki or Berlin area and to remote candidates across Europe.

About the job

• You will be leading and enabling a growing team of UX Designers
• You will help them understand the career path and provide sponsorship and coaching so everyone gets a chance at greater scope, responsibility, and visibility regardless of title.
• You will collaborate closely with the Director of Design and other other members of the leadership group on UX strategy, OKRs, processes, team culture and cross department collaboration.
• You work closely with product management, marketing & engineering managers to understand their needs and collaborate with them on making product initiatives successful and creating positive impact for our users and our business.
• You will guide your team through design challenges by facilitating workshops and ideation sessions.
• You will delegate design work to your team members based on roadmap priorities but also roll up your sleeves when your team needs hands-on support.
• You take an active role in concepting and defining our overall UX architecture together with staff designers and other design managers to ensure consistent adaption of our UX strategy.
• You build strong relationships with your team members and collaborate with them on a weekly basis. As your team will be distributed across multiple locations, consistent communication and online collaboration will be key to growing together as a team. You will also have regular opportunities to bring your team together in one location.
• You discover and hire talented UX designers and support other design managers in the hiring process. You assess their skills and identify growth and learning opportunities together with them.
• You establish a performance evaluation routine for each team member, give constant feedback for each team member and set the expectations for their roles and the results they deliver.
• You leverage your UX design and project management skills to lead and coordinate UX work across multiple product lines and functions.

Minimum qualifications

• 10 years of experience in UX Design.
• 2 years of experience managing or leading design teams of 3-5 designers
• Portfolio of UX-focused work samples for SaaS applications

Skills we are looking for

• Excellent communication, presentation, interpersonal, and analytical skills; the ability to communicate complex interaction concepts clearly and persuasively across different audiences and levels of the organization.
• Experience with working in a rapidly growing organization
• Experience with establishing a way of working and running continuous improvements
• Experience balancing product, development, and user goals to shape the overall product strategy.
• Experience working on a B2B SaaS product or on a developer focussed cloud product.

We are proud of our organization's culture - we search for the most pragmatic solution in everything we do and cultivate a trusting, supportive environment that empowers everyone to strive for excellence.

Besides our people and culture, we offer you:

• An agile working environment with short decision paths
• Compensation for your open source contributions in your free time
• Flexible working hours, including remote working when needed
• Choose the devices and tools that make you work the best
• Cool Office in the centre of Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg) / centre of Helsinki (Kamppi)
• Mobile phone and subscription
• Participation in employee stock option plan

• Home Internet subscription (Helsinki)
• Private health and dental care (Helsinki)
• Sports, cultural events and massage benefits (Helsinki)
• Office snacks, soft drinks, treats and fruits (Helsinki)

You will be part of a highly-skilled, tight-knit and growing diverse team, making your contribution essential to what is becoming a truly unique success story. If this sounds interesting, we’d love to hear from you.