Lead Product Designer

Apollo is on a mission to make the world’s data more accessible by making APIs easier to build and scale. Our graph router powers some of the world’s most popular websites, and as a product designer here, you’ll get to shape the tools that our customers use to manage their graphs. In this role, you’ll work across our many interfaces like our core product (Studio), our learning platform (Odyssey), our CLI (Rover), our local developer portal (Sandbox), and more!

We are still a startup, so there are many different hats you can wear here. You could lead a strategic initiative on product feature placement, manifest large-scale changes to our information architecture, dive deep into our charts & analytics reporting, or bring features like graph visualization to life – just to name a few! We’re looking for a Lead Product Designer who has management experience and can introduce strategic design thinking into our PDE (Product, Design, Engineering) culture.

If you’re passionate about product design & supporting your teammates in their careers and aspirations, you'll enjoy the unique challenges and pace of startup life. Ideally you have worked on a technical SaaS product before, in dev tools or other domains.

• You’ll lead our small but mighty team in this player-coach role.
• You’ll foster a culture of design thinking & find practical ways to apply design methodologies to our engineering-heavy organization.
• You’ll develop a clear vision and strategy for design at Apollo.
• You’ll lead strategic initiatives like redesigning our information architecture, bringing new product lines to life, designing user journeys that span our various interfaces, etc.
• You’ll conduct studies and gather user research on initiatives. You’ll be very close to our customers yourself.
• You’ll be a major contributor to our group strategy and a leader who inspires & motivates people all across the company.

• You’ve managed a design team before & know how to support designers in career growth.
• You’re proficient in Figma.
• You’re proficient in Atomic Design & have built or contributed to design systems.
• You’re proficient with HTML and CSS and can collaborate with engineers on implementation,
• You have experience crafting visually strong, clear, and delightful experiences,
• You have a track record of leading complex and strategic initiatives across multiple designers that deliver business impact.
• You're skilled at finding the balance between business needs, strong design, and practical solutions, and can speak to this through the work in your portfolio,
• You have excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills,
• You’re excited to work in the dynamic environment of a startup,

• Experience with visual design and branding,
• Experience with UX writing,
• Basic coding experience would be helpful in understanding our product & users. This isn’t a strict requirement, but you’ll need to be excited to learn some code on the job to fully understand our product.

Whether you binge-watch a series on Netflix, plan faraway vacations from your phone, or read international news online, you’ve likely used Apollo’s technology this week. Apollo supports some of the largest GraphQL platforms in the world. 

We’re not looking to rest on our laurels though — we’re aiming to change how software is built. Apollo wants to empower every software team to build an amazing user experience across any number of clients, without dealing with a barrage of API endpoints. 

Equal to all of that, Apollo is intent on becoming the company where you can see your career grow through challenging work, collaborating with incredible teammates, and accomplishing the unattainable.

At Apollo, we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation whilst ensuring consistency within the team in each country. We make hiring decisions based on your skills, experience, and our overall assessment of what we learned during the hiring process.

In addition to the U.S. base salary range, we also provide equity and benefits. Apollo offers all U.S. employees a choice of 3 Anthem Blue Cross medical plans and California residents can also choose from an additional 2 Kaiser medical plans. Dental and Vision benefits are provided by Sun Life Financial.

Equal Opportunity: Apollo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a talented and diverse workforce.

Privacy: California residents applying for positions at Apollo can see our privacy policy here.

E-Verify: Apollo is an E-Verify employer and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. For more information please visit E-Verify.