VP, Product Design

For the past decade, we’ve empowered thousands of teams worldwide to confidently share the Deploy button with others. Now, we’re pursuing ambitious plans to uplift entire organizations, not just the best teams, so they can confidently get changes into production.

We’re looking for a design leader to be the ambassador of our product experience, inspiring a vision of what is possible and empowering our designers to transform that vision into reality.

We’re a scale-up company, so in this role, you can expect your day-to-day to include the following:

• Think deeply about the design of human factors for individuals, teams, and organization-scale operations.

• Hold a high bar for a technical product experience that spans the web, command line, desired state code, scripts, APIs, and chat interfaces so that we can shape the most critical patterns in our design system.

• Oversee a range of customer research efforts to ensure we capture the human factors of problems, and the design considerations are represented in opportunities that product groups and teams are pursuing.

• Shape the design practice with design managers, enabling everyone to make career-defining contributions.

• Monitor the overall impact of our product experience, setting the bar for what good looks like and spotting emerging trends and issues.

• Partner with product and engineering leadership on R&D initiatives and structure.

Product designers are embedded in product groups and teams across the Australia + New Zealand and Israel + Ukraine development regions. Among them are recently introduced specialist roles such as product researcher and content designer to help us achieve a greater depth of execution.

You will be part of the R&D leadership team alongside product and engineering leadership - Colin Bowern and Michael Noonan. You will have a relationship with Paul Stovell, our founder and CEO, who is passionate about creating the best product experiences. You will work with Revenue and Marketing leaders to understand how customers land and expand. You’ll partner with People & Culture and Finance organizations to accelerate R&D and the design function.

• Cultivated a sense of what well-executed design looks like for B2B software products.
• Experience with working with cross-functional software product teams;
• Experience with engaging customers and cross-functional stakeholders at various levels;
• Experience at a Director level or higher -- leading managers and principal ICs;
• Be pragmatic and adaptable, as working in a scale-up is an ever-changing environment;
• Have exceptional organizational and analytical skills, along with attention to detail;
• Have excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Experience in product expansion, where new potential paths were being explored;
• Experience in product design of developer products with multiple interface types.
• Worked in both a product-led and sales-led B2B product company.

Compensation:

Octopus has an internally open and transparent system for compensation. Any Octonaut can view the compensation for any role at any level. This ensures people doing the same work with the same skill get paid the same.

We'll discuss your compensation requirements in the initial chat.

Benefits include a minimum of 25 days annual leave, up to 10 days of paid sick and carers leave, 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave with flexible return options, and stock options. Learn more.

Below is the interview process you can expect for this role. We know interviewing can seem daunting, but rest assured we designed our interview process to move quickly while still getting you all the information you need.

👋 Initial chat

[30 min] Meet a Talent Acquisition team member, where you'll learn more about life at Octopus and the role. We’ll give you a glimpse into the organization structure and how we work.

☕ Hiring manager interview

[45 Min] Meet our SVP, Product, to explore the shape of the role and the problems we're hoping to solve together.

🤩 Senior leadership approach interview

[60 Min] Meet our VP, People & Culture, to explore how you balance inspiration and accountability as a senior leader connected to our leadership code.

🧑‍💻Team interview

[90 min] Present a case study of a strategic design initiative that you’ve led. Share your initial impressions of our product. You’ll present to a panel of Design, Product, and Engineering members that you’ll work with.

🔭Founder interview

[60 mins] Meet our founding CEO to discuss how you determine what well-executed design looks like through a mix of context, design principles, and craftsmanship.

Our public employee handbook is the best place to learn more about life at Octopus. It includes our values, how we structure teams, career progression, leave and benefits, and much more.

If you're enthusiastic about this position, even if you don’t meet all the criteria above, we wholeheartedly encourage you to submit your application. Our talent team is in-house, and we recognize that every individual brings something unique. We take the time to review every application and consider how you might add to the team.

We know your time is precious. If you apply, we promise to update you at least once per week about the status of your application and to give you clear expectations for each step in the journey.

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