Design Director

Tallwave; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Tallwave seeks a Design Director to lead a creative team and drive innovative design strategies for client projects. The role emphasizes leadership, creativity, and the ability to translate business requirements into meaningful design solutions. The ideal candidate will possess strong communication skills and have extensive experience in user experience and product design.

Benefits

Comprehensive Medical, Dental, Vision, Life insurance

401(k) Retirement plan

Generous PTO policy

Employer-paid disability plans

Qualifications

• 8 years of experience in Product or UX Design.
• 4 years of experience leading design teams.
• Strong working knowledge of front-end coding principles.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow design team talent aligned with business goals.
• Deliver actionable feedback and individual growth plans.
• Develop strategies and execute design projects across the product lifecycle.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Creativity

User Experience Design

Design Thinking

Education

Degree in Design or related field

Tools

Figma

Adobe Creative Suite

JIRA

Google Suite

Job description

The Company
We’re Tallwave, a digital agency. We’re a curious, competitive group of data-driven marketers, designers, and creative problem solvers who move fast to help our clients achieve their most ambitious goals. We find parity boring, and we’re constantly challenging ourselves to deliver innovative solutions with speed, precision, and impeccable craftsmanship. We dream big, we drive results, and we’ll make a lasting impact on our clients’ businesses.

The Job
Are you obsessed with driving business growth through expertly crafted design, from campaign creative to website experience and beyond? Can you take a product idea and know exactly how to translate it to user experience? Are you a relentless cheerleader for the user? Is “active listening” your middle name? Are you comfortable speaking candidly and challenging assumptions with respect and grace?

Then you might be exactly who we’ve been looking for!

Tallwave is in need of a proven Designer leader who is a confident, creative, and experienced collaborator who believes flexibility, adaptability, and creativity are key to success. The ideal Tallwave Design Director is a battle tested leader who is flexible, adaptable, and creative, and can articulate the value of a creative concept, interaction, or product feature to engineers, designers, and clients with equal effectiveness. I you're an experienced player/coach who can both lead a design team and roll up your sleeves as an individual contributor to design something amazing, keep reading…

The Person
Tallwave seeks out individuals who are a cut above. Their exceptional skill, diverse perspectives, obsession for winning together, and relentless pursuit of continuous self-improvement, both professionally and personally, give them an innate ability to lead, innovate, and inspire. They have well-honed philosophies and points of view in their areas of expertise, they think unconventionally, and their endless curiosity pushes them to constantly explore, learn, improve, and try new things.

Our ambitions are too big to leave room for individual egos, and the true measure of our success is what we can accomplish together. Our culture balances individual aspirations and accountability with each other. We value selflessness, humility, and tremendous work ethic. This drives an inspiration and dedication that can be felt across the organization.

The Job Duties
Our new Tallwave Design Director candidate will:

• Lead, manage, retain, and grow design team talent in line with Tallwave business goals, client needs, and industry dynamics through:
  • Clearly communicate the team's goals, priorities, and how they align with the organization’s overall mission and objectives.
  • Embody the organization's core values and behaviors, setting an example for team members to follow in terms of responsiveness, engagement, initiative, ownership, embracing healthy conflict, etc.
  • Build psychological safety on the design team by demonstrating empathy, integrity, and transparency in all interactions and cultivating a culture that values diversity and equity.
  • Deliver regular, actionable feedback on performance, celebrating wins, and collaborate successfully with team members to create individualized growth and development plans aligned with their career aspirations and organizational needs.
  • Proactively identify and provide the tools, training, and support necessary for the team to excel and exploring, testing, and deploying new skills, tools, processes, services, etc. to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of our team members, our services, and our business.
  • Act as a growth agent by identifying opportunities where the team’s expertise can add value—whether by supporting business development efforts or expanding work with existing clients.
  • Monitor team resource allocations and utilization regularly to ensure that talent is deployed effectively toward billable work and initiatives that contribute to future growth and adjusting resource allocations to prevent underutilization and burnout, ensuring team members remain engaged and productive.
• Guide the design team and cross-functional partners in translating and documenting business and user requirements into meaningful interactive and brand experiences.
• Move between developing strategy and carrying out the tactical execution.
• Lead design projects across the entire product lifecycle and multiple product releases.
• Rapidly produce multiple concepts and prototypes; knowing when to apply pixel-perfect attention to detail, and when to make low-fi sketches and prototypes.
• Participate in design critiques, presenting your work and guiding the design team in presenting their own with variations and rationale and embracing constructive feedback from others.
• Partner with the new business team, account directors, and client strategist to diagnose client needs during the sales process, define solutions, and advance expert points of view on design strategy and vision—not just visual ideas but what we should build and why.
• Help manage client relationships within the context of the design process, such as leading workshops and design reviews.

The Skills

• Design simple and elegant design approaches for complex problems.
• Define design strategies and solutions for products and brands.
• Dive into the details—always with the bigger picture in mind.
• Have the ability to implement and leverage a variety of user experience analytics metrics in order to analyze and improve the overall user’s experience.
• Be able to prioritize time-sensitive assignments.
• Keep an active dialogue with the team about new design trends and industry tools.
• Produce great work with moderate to minimal oversight.
• Demonstrate strong people and communication skills.
• Have relentlessly high standards for design excellence within a fast-paced environment.
• Be accountable to your customers and your teammates.
• Use a design-thinking approach to affect decisions on a higher level, solve business problems, and create business opportunities.
• Develop and enforce user experience design, interface design, and branding best practices.
• Create and improve workflows and processes.

The Requirements

• The ideal Tallwave Design Manager will have the following experience and education:
• 8 years of experience in Product or UX Design.
• 4 years of experience leading design teams.
• Intermediate to master level with tools including Figma, Atlassian Products (JIRA & Confluence), Adobe Creative Suite, and Google Suite (particularly Google Slides).
• Familiarity working with dev teams and strong working knowledge of front-end coding and back-end technical structures for deploying design and design systems.
• Solid foundation in the principles of UI and UX.
• A degree from a university (cool, but not mandatory).

The Culture and Perks of Being a Tallwaver:

• We embrace a maverick attitude. We’re willing to challenge convention and think beyond the ask.
• We are committed to relentless pursuit. We’re curious with a focus on personal growth.
• We value selfless teamwork, demonstrating strong leadership qualities with a knack for collaboration.
• We are thoughtfully rigorous, have a strong work ethic and have strong attention to detail.
• An environment that fosters empathy and compassion for each other and our clients.
• A diverse (and competitive, and hilarious, and sometimes a little crazy) group of coworkers. You know, the kind you actually want to grab a drink with after work.
• Career growth and opportunity. We grow leaders here.
• We recognize the contributions of individuals and teams throughout Tallwave, and we stop to celebrate through Happy hours, on-the-fly high fives, core-values-based awards during our All-Hands Meetings, and Tallwave anniversary awards, to name a few.
• We offer “Lunch & Discuss” sessions, and formal training sessions focused on continuous learning and growth as a team.
• We’re more concerned about how we work than where we work. We offer remote work and office hours flexibility as needed.
• We are surrounded by badass talent and clients -- our work has been featured in TechCrunch, Forbes, Wired, Product Hunt, and more.
• We’ve been featured on the INC Best Workplaces List, the Phoenix Business Journal Best Places to Work List, and the AZCentral Top Places to Work List.

Benefits

• We offer comprehensive Medical, Dental, Vision, Life insurance.
• 401(k) Retirement plan.
• We trust our team -- we have a generous PTO policy. Seriously, did you read about it yet? It’s kind of amazing!
• We provide employer-paid short-term disability and long-term disability plans and life insurance.

Why You’ll Love Working with Us
Free to be you – each and every day! We celebrate diversity and empower you to bring your authentic self to work, always. We know that diversity, equity, and inclusion is not about checking a box. It’s more than words; it is a pledge and a promise that Tallwave is passionate about pursuing. We recognize having an all-encompassing culture will help us learn and grow collectively and will continue to foster our mission of making everyone we work with wildly successful.


Physical Demands
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is occasionally required to stand, walk, use hands to handle or feel, and reach with hands and arms.
The employee is regularly required to sit, talk, and hear.
Constant use of computer-based technology such as computers, internet-based phones, headsets, printers/scanners, filing systems, etc. is required.
Manual dexterity and fine motor skills required.
Good close and far visual acuity.
The employee must, very infrequently, lift and /or move up to 15 pounds.


Remote Working Conditions
All employees are expected to operate in a professional home office environment and routinely use standard office equipment like computers, telephones, and teleconferencing equipment.


Position Applicants, please note the following:
At this time, this position is open to applicants who are legally authorized to work in the United States. We are unable to provide visa sponsorship of any kind.

Tallwave is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law

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