Product Designer

37signals is hiring a Web App Product Designer. We don't hire for this position often, so this is a rare opportunity.

We're looking for a designer, not a decorator. A product builder, not a picture maker. A shipper, not a prototyper. There's plenty of the latter, but we're after the former. We've built a close-knit team of five wonderful designers, and we'd be thrilled to have you as our sixth.

Depending on your skills and experience, you'll either come in at the Senior or Lead level. Senior pays $193,858, Lead pays $229,064. Additional perks, benefits, profit sharing, and more are detailed in the handbook.

About the Job
At many companies, product design is split into different roles: UX, UI, front-end development, copywriter, etc. At 37signals, it’s all one role. This means our designers are exceptional generalists. Along with having great visual taste and sensibilities, you must be able to write your own production-quality front-end HTML, CSS, and English. You'll pair up with a back-end programmer to bring designs, features, and products to life.

We believe the best designs come from someone who can see it all through, from ideas to visuals to the finished product. We work from the interface first — starting with design, rather than ending with it — so you'll be involved in the work right from the beginning. Our projects are design-led, so you’ll have a lot of flexibility, freedom, influence and impact right away. We follow the 6-week cycle Shape Up process, invented here.

You'll get to work on heavily-used products like Basecamp and HEY that push the industry forward. You won't be sequestered on a team that only gets to work on a slice of something — you'll work on all of everything. Working at 37signals as a designer means working on whole products. Existing products, brand new unreleased ones, and internal tools, too.

As a manager of one, you’ll drive shaped projects, big and small, over six-week cycles. You’ll set direction, take ownership, make calls, and ultimately, once situated and comfortable, see things through without a lot of oversight.

You love writing, too. You understand that copywriting is design. The words matter as much as the pixels. No matter how great the visuals are, bad writing is bad design. You should care about how things are phrased as much as you care about how they look.

Here are some things we’ve worked on recently to give you a sense of what you’ll be doing day-to-day.

• Designed a new “Hilltop” view which gives someone an at-a-glace overview of where multiple Basecamp projects stand on a single screen.
• Designed an innovative “Power Through New” feature in HEY which lets someone respond to all unread emails in HEY on a single distraction-free screen rather than one at a time.
• Made significant accessibility improvements to the HEY Calendar.
• Designed and launched a whole new way to add external tools like Figma, Dropbox, Github to your Basecamp projects.
• Redesigned the Basecamp Project Screen to improve proportions, clarity, positioning of various elements, and spacing.
• Extracted reusable CSS components after noticing repeating patterns in our codebase.
• Introduced PWA versions of both Basecamp and HEY so people can run the web apps on their desktops, phones, or tablets as if they were native apps.
• Introduced time tracking into Basecamp with a new feature called Timesheet.
• Designed entirely new UIs from scratch for two brand new products we’ll be releasing in 2025.

We Are Remote
37signals is a fully remote company, and this is a remote job. For this position we’re only considering applications from people who live in time zones UTC -11 through UTC +2, to overlap with our existing team. We are not hiring from locations outside of that range, and we won't consider candidates who would need to work a graveyard shift to make the overlap happen. 

About Us
37signals has been proudly building opinionated small business software for more than 20 years. As a privately-held profitable company, we don’t answer to anyone but ourselves and our customers. There are no demands from investors, ridiculous growth targets, or trend chasing. We design our products to solve real-life problems, and we strongly defend our customers’ attention and privacy along the way. We build products that endure in a way that’s sustainable.

Further, working at 37signals means you won't be mired in meetings, shaking your head at burdensome process, or be asked to put in hero-hours. Your nights and weekends are yours, not ours. All we ask is a reasonable 8-hour day and 40-hour work week, and we'll stay out of your way so you can do the best work of your career. We hope you'll join us.

We respect everyone's right to participate in political expression and activism, but avoid having political debates on our internal communication systems. 37signals as a company also does not weigh in on politics publicly, outside of topics directly related to our business. You should be at peace with both of these stances.

Benefits & Compensation
37signals pays in the top 10% of the industry based on San Francisco rates. Same position, same pay, no matter where you live. Depending on your skills and experience, we’re hiring either at the Senior level or the Lead level. Senior pays $193,858, Lead pays $229,064. We’ll determine where you fit during the interview process.

Our benefits support a life well-lived away from work. Ample time off and all the resources you need to support you in doing the best work of your career. Our handbook has detailed information about the benefits we offer.

Applicants from outside of the US will be offered a contractor role on comparable terms and equal pay with our domestic employees.

How to Apply
Please submit an application that speaks directly to this position. Tell us about yourself, about what you can bring to 37signals, and why this position is the right next step for you. Tell us why you're a designer. Tell us why you love working on the web. Be descriptive, but don’t feel the need to write a novel — 800 words or so should be plenty. Last, be sure to show us your work, and work other people have done that you really admire.

We’re accepting applications until Monday, March 24th at 11:00PM UTC. There’s no benefit to filing early, so take your time.

What happens after you apply?
Once the deadline passes, we expect to take a week to complete our review of applications. You’ll hear from us by the end of March about advancement to the interview stage. Expect 2-3 interviews, all one hour, all remote, with your future colleagues, on your schedule. We’ll talk through your background, your approach to design, and dive into your professional knowledge. No gotchas or surprises.

After interviews, the final candidates will be given an at-home design challenge. The exercise is representative of the kind of work we do, and it helps us understand how you’d approach new problems from scratch. We invite no more than 5 candidates to this stage, and those candidates should expect to spend about 3 work days completing the project. You’ll be compensated for your time.

We expect to make an offer in May, with a flexible start date later that month.

Please note that due to the number of applications we receive for open positions, we’re unable to offer individual feedback during the screening process.

This is a demanding application process and significant, long-term career move to consider. We appreciate you giving us that consideration, and we promise to give you our full attention in return. We look forward to hearing from you!