Group Design Manager

What's the opportunity? 

We’re looking for an experienced Senior Design Manager to grow our people and products. Design Managers at Intercom directly support product Designers in delivering the best work they can while also working on high-level strategic design projects themselves. The opportunity to have impact at both of these levels is massive: you’d be joining a small Design Leadership Team, so you’ll have very real ownership and potential to define the role and make your mark. At the same time, we’re not just starting out - there’s a stable and mature environment and an existing base on which you can build. All together, you’ll have the opportunity to do the best work of your career.

We've had Designers in key leadership roles, including at the exec level, from the very beginning. This has made Design a core foundation of our company's DNA, and you'll never have to justify the importance of Design. We genuinely care about people and value kindness in our everyday interactions. You'll be able to be yourself, feel valued, supported, learn and grow no matter how experienced you are.

If you want to learn more about what it's like to work here, check out intercom.design, read what makes us different, and listen to a podcast with our Chief Product Officer, Paul Adams. If you’re passionate about helping Product Designers to grow and learn while shipping high-quality product that solves real problems for customers, we'd love to hear from you! By the way, imposter syndrome is a real thing, don't let it stop you and please apply!

We currently operate in a hybrid working model and have offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Dublin, London and Sydney.  

What will I be doing? 

• Managing and supporting Product Designers and Senior Product Designers across multiple products

• Coaching and providing feedback on your team’s performance, helping them to develop clear career development goals and action plans on how to achieve them

• Partner with the Group Product Manager and Group Engineering Manager for the group you lead, collectively ensuring that the group is strategically aligned, engaged, and delivering results.

• Helping to shape the future vision of products and driving strategic design work in exciting areas, such as conversational design, messengers, machine learning and more

• Partnering directly with our Directors and VPs of Product Design in Dublin and London to evolve the Product Design team: our people, our structure, our processes, our beliefs

• Collaborating with leaders across the company: other design leaders, Research, Data Analytics, Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and more

• Growing Intercom Design by recruiting and representing us publicly in ways like writing for our blog, speaking, community building and outreach, and more

What skills do I need? 

• Experience managing Product Designers and genuinely caring about how the people who report to you perform, feel, and grow. The ability to develop a genuine relationship with people and help them grow, learn, and succeed.

• Experience designing digital products and systems. This isn’t solely a people management role - you’ll also be involved with and guide the product work. All of our managers care deeply about and actively engage in our product development process, details, and outcomes.

• A working knowledge of the full stack of Product Design, from systems thinking to visual design. You don’t need to be a specialist in all of these things, but you should be able to have informed, intelligent conversations.

• Ability to communicate with precision, clarity, honesty, and respect.

• Ability to envision and lead change. There are many things that we still need to evolve and improve about how we work, and design managers are a key part in driving that change. We’re looking for someone who aligns with our values, but also who makes us better.

• A growth mindset. Willingness to own problems. Comfort with ambiguity. Passion for building product. A desire to make things better.

Bonus skills & attributes 

We'd also love to see your portfolio of design work. It should touch on the problems you solved (ideally focused on designing software products) and the process you applied to tackling the challenges, rather than focusing just on visual polish, or the final deliverables.

Benefits 

We are a well-treated bunch, with awesome benefits! If there’s something important to you that’s not on this list, talk to us! 

• Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing start-up

• We serve lunch every weekday, plus a variety of snack foods and a fully stocked kitchen

• Regular compensation reviews - we reward great work!

• Pension scheme & match up to 4%

• Peace of mind with life assurance, as well as comprehensive health and dental insurance for you and your dependents

• Flexible paid time off policy

• Paid maternity leave, as well as 6 weeks paternity leave for fathers, to let you spend valuable time with your loved ones

• If you’re cycling, we’ve got you covered on the Cycle-to-Work Scheme. With secure bike storage too 

• MacBooks are our standard, but we’re happy to get you whatever equipment helps you get your job done