Lead Product Designer

Wanted: Lead Product Designer

(Challenging, interesting work, mainly remote, competitive salary and benefits, brilliant people to work with, huge staff discount, an amazing culture of freedom and responsibility, and a total lack of corporate bullshit)

We’re looking for a Lead Product Designer to head up our Digital Product Design capability, primarily focused on our retail and trade customers.

Who we are

We’re a multi-award-winning drinks and technology start-up on a mission to disrupt the drinks industry.

We’re re-imagining online drinks retail from the ground up, using cutting edge technology and fanatical customer service to build a company we want to be customers of and create unexpected delight as we help people explore, buy and enjoy high end whisky and other spirits.

In everything we do, we are disruptive innovators; it is baked into our DNA to challenge orthodoxy and received wisdom wherever we find it.

We’ve grown a lot since we were just a few kids in a shed with big dreams, but we haven’t lost our hunger to build something great, and we’re looking for people who have the same passion for making things better to join us on that journey.

In the last 10 years we’ve become the number 1 player in our industry, but we’ve barely gotten started. We’re excited about the future, so if you’d like to come and help us build it, read on!

Some more about the day to day role;

We’re looking for a hands-on Lead Product Designer to manage our distributed design team.

As a natural leader, you’ll offer knowledge sharing, support, mentorship, and provide inspiration to those in your team – helping each member develop and improve.

You will take in briefs, see opportunities to improve design at Atom and you will make sure our designs are delivered at a high-level of quality and on-time.

You’ll know the best way to tackle complex challenges and understand the various components that make up the design and development process. You’ll know how to look for opportunities to improve and expand design on our retail and trade platforms, recognising that it’s a combination of strategic and incremental changes.

In your first 30 days you’ll go on a crash course to deeply understand our (very) complex vertically integrated business. You’ll get to know the design team, meet stakeholders and Project Managers. You’ll take stock of our processes and tools. You’ll be introduced to our current projects. You may even help out on a design project or two.

In your first 60 days you’ll start bringing together your new knowledge, making recommendations for how we can improve design processes. You’ll begin to have 1-to-1 check-ins with other designers, offering them feedback and advice. You’ll have regular chats with the Head of Product Design to make sure you’re supported along the way.

In your first 90 days you’ll be taking in briefs from across the business and allocating designers with the right skills to projects. You’ll have regular weekly catch-ups with your team, giving them design guidance and a sense of pace. You’ll be checking-in with stakeholders and developers to ensure design handovers run smoothly. You’ll be managing your own time as well and getting into projects where needed.

Mostly remote work but it would be great if you could travel to our offices in Tonbridge or Brighton when needed.

• To clearly set expectations around individual performance, process, communication and delivery.
• To effectively prioritise work that is aligned with business goals
• To collaborate with other teams across departments and manage stakeholders across the business
• To initiate conversations and appropriately action and communicate challenges and goals
• Oversee and contribute to the overall improvement of the UX design quality and capability within Atom
• Coach, mentor and exemplify best practices with a flexible mindset
• To ensure quality, speed and an interactive approach for design deliverables from the design team
• To look out for ways to improve work processes and promote a sharing and collaborative culture for a distributed team.
• To take on design and UX research when needed

About You:

You’re highly visual and want to build a user-centred, cutting-edge, respected Product Design unit that can do what others can only dream of.

You are highly intelligent, tenacious and motivated. You are utterly intolerant of corporate bullshit and mediocrity.

You have a positive can-do attitude, you learn fast, and relish a challenge. You question things and need to understand them on a deep level. You get out of bed each morning excited to get cracking and make things better.

You are exceptionally curious and creative - solving hard problems is what gets you out of bed in the morning.

You love efficiency and hate waste in all its forms – you relentlessly automate and eliminate repetitive tasks. You are extremely proud of how little manual repetitive work your department does. You build a culture of continuous improvement.

You enjoy guiding the design vision for the team but you also love rolling up your sleeves and getting stuck in when needed.

What You’ll need

• You are well-organised in your own process and can allocate work/projects appropriately to other designers.
• You have implemented (even created) design systems
• You have defined and developed branding guidelines for digital products, ensured they are market relevant, and applied with consistency
• Having led design teams working within the Tech sector, you’re a bad-ass people leader, you give honest feedback and supercharge great performance in others.
• You have practised as a designer for at least 10 years, and experience working at an agency is a plus (added bonus if you have worked on e-commerce and B2B platforms specifically)
• You’ve worked closely with clients and led the design of a few top-notch websites or apps and as such are adept at managing Senior stakeholders with bold ideas.
• You have exceptional attention to detail and are versed in agile methodologies / prioritisation methods. (Scrum or Agile PM certification is desirable but not essential)
• You have strong typography skills and understand how to design with colour systems
• You have experience undertaking UX research and usability testing
• You can effectively review and critique design, utilising your excellent verbal and written communication skills

Why work with us

We’re all about boundless curiosity, so you’ll discover loads of opportunities to spark your creative flair and work along-side unreal talent who all have the same job description, to ‘Make Atom Successful.’ Trust is at the epicentre of all that we can do, so you’ll work in a transparent and honest environment where we have each other’s backs, and be free of ageing corporate policies and rules.

Life here’s about so much more than pay and benefits - you might get a slightly higher salary if you cram onto an expensive, crowded commuter train into the city, but you’ll struggle to find a company with the flex, agility and unique-ness that we have. In short, we’ve got you covered financially but if money is your main driver, we’re not for you.

We hate waste in all of it’s forms and time is no different, so we’re focused on productivity and output rather than when or where you work, or what you wear into the office - you can come in fancy dress for all we care! This means that although we can’t promise anything, flexible working options are built into our DNA.

Along with the stuff you get for turning up to work each day (think private healthcare scheme, unlimited annual leave, pension, cycle-2-work, eye care, enhanced maternity & paternity leave, free food, drinks and parking at the office), you’ll also get a healthy staff discount on our world-class range (just in case that makes a difference).

We don’t sit still, and there’s a lot more to come... Apply now if you want to join us.