Senior Design Director (f/m/d)

About the opportunity

Contentful is looking for a Senior Design Director (f/m/d) who can help scale up Contentful in its next stage of growth, set the long term strategy across all facets of experience (user, research and content) for the next 3 years. As a Senior Design Director, you will lead and inspire a high-performing team of product designers, content writers and researchers while also working with your product manager and engineering counterparts. You should possess strong design, communication and leadership skills and have a proven track record of building excellence, quality and process in the discipline. The ideal candidate will have strong people management skills, organisational design experience, as well as an accomplished systems, interaction, and UX design credentials. The Contentful Product Design culture emphasizes elevating design quality and efficacy in an evidence-based product culture, and our new Design Director should help us make progress in that ongoing evolution.

What to expect?

  • Support design managers to scale the design practice during our scale-up growth phase
  • Attract and retain a diverse team of highly talented design leaders with a well-balanced range across purposefully chosen skill sets.
  • Evolve a thriving culture where designers grow in their careers and feel a strong sense of belonging.
  • Drive design vision
  • Partner closely with senior leadership in developing a winning strategy to achieve our mission
  • Foster collaboration and understanding across the company
  • Help to create alignment with product and engineering on priorities leading to product design and execution
  • Partner closely with a world-class team of product managers, designers, engineers, user experience researchers, and data analysts to deliver high quality experiences for different user persona and product tiers.
  • Set quality standards and implement process improvements to support them

What you need to be successful?

  • 12+ years of total design experience, 
  • 6+ years of those leading direct reports
  • Significant experience in leading multiple teams and initiatives simultaneously
  • A track record of conceptualizing and shipping successful SaaS products
  • The ability to lead complex design topics, scaling your presence from clearly communicating a design vision to addressing project or organizational issues
  • An informed set of design principles from shipping and learning throughout your career, and a demonstrated ability to operate from a first-principles perspective
  • A deep understanding of human-centered design practices, how to leverage product design to solve complex business problems, and digital product development (consumer research, engineering, and data)
  • Senior people management, team development, recruiting and org building experience
  • Experience building relationships with leadership across the organization (with marketing, sales, customer experience, etc.), and comfortable influencing strategic decisions

What's in it for you?

  • Join an ambitious tech company reshaping the way people build digital products. 
  • Full-time employees receive Stock Options for the opportunity to share in the success of our company
  • We value Work-Life balance and flexibility! A generous combination of vacation days, trust-based work hours and the option to work from the home office/remotely
  • Use your personal education budget plus education days to improve your skills and grow in your career
  • Enjoy a full range of virtual events, including workshops, guest speakers, and fun team activities, supporting learning and networking exchange beyond the usual work duties
  • Share and navigate the excitement of your new role with your CFF (Contentful First Friend)
  • Relocation assistance for candidates moving to Germany and Immigration support when requiring a visa to be employed directly with Contentful.  
  • Our Germany based employees: Join us for free German classes or reach your fitness goals with our Urban Sports Club discount
  • Office Perks: We have a brand new high-tech, dog-friendly office in central Berlin, where you can show off your barista skills at our artisan coffee machine
  • Plus, Contentful socks! And other amazing swag as part of company events. Oh yeah!

To view more career opportunities, visit https://www.contentful.com/careers/ #LI-SB1

Who are we?

Contentful is the leading content platform that powers digital experiences for over 30% of the Fortune 500 companies and thousands of global brands. Our platform unifies content in a single hub, structures it for use in any digital channel and integrates seamlessly with hundreds of tools through open APIs. It lets developers and content creators work in parallel, increasing team efficiency and happiness. Companies such as Shopify, Staples, Atlasssian, Electronic Arts, Chanel, Roche, Vodafone use Contentful to build their mobile and web products, voice controlled apps and more. 

We’re growing rapidly and we have secured over $330 million in funding from top-tier partners such as Tiger Global, Sapphire Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, General Catalyst and Benchmark.

More than 650 people from 70 nations contribute their energy and creativity to Contentful, working from hubs in Berlin, San Francisco, Denver and distributed around the world.

Everyone is welcome here!

“Everyone is welcome here” is a celebrated component of our culture. At Contentful, we strive to create an inclusive environment that empowers our employees. We believe that our products and services benefit from our diverse backgrounds and experiences and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, physical [dis]ability, or length of time spent unemployed. We invite you to apply and join us!

If you need reasonable accommodations at any point during the application or interview process, please let your recruiting coordinator know.

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