Director of Product Design

Are you an experienced design leader who thrives in a startup environment and understands the developer audience? Do you love shaping strategy and being able to see the tangible impact of your work? If so, Apollo GraphQL is the place you want to be! As the leader of our product design team, you will have an immediate impact on our product and design culture and will shape the trajectory of our leading platform in a major new category. You will work closely with the broader Product, Design, and Engineering organization as well as customers and other stakeholders to grow and nurture a world-class design practice. You will take over our current product design team and have room to hire more. We are looking for a collaborative, results-driven leader with experience in leading a design team and advocating for a strong design ethos in the broader organization. GraphQL is transforming the software development space by creating a brand new layer in companies' stacks called the supergraph that helps engineering teams ship faster and build richer experiences than ever before. Companies like Netflix, Walmart, Expedia, Peloton, DoorDash, The New York Times, and Zillow use Apollo, and our open-source product is downloaded 17M times per month. Gartner estimates that by 2025, 50% of companies will be using GraphQL, and we're the market leader.

What you will do

• Direct all product design work, including leading our design methods, culture, and success measures. Working for our head of product, you will set the mission, vision, and goals of the design team. You will own the overall product design function and how design participates in research, strategy, and road-mapping process.
• Grow and nurture the design team. You’ll inherit a team of 4 product designers with room to hire at least 3 more this year. As your team grows, you'll define clear design career paths, levels, and expectations for your team
• Foster strong design thinking throughout Apollo. Create a healthy and inspiring feedback culture that extends throughout our product development teams and advocate for the principles of great design with our leadership groups.

About you

• You've been a designer yourself and are familiar with the challenges of design organizations in growing technology-focused companies.
• You've managed designers before and have experience elevating teams to do their best work that ultimately gets shipped to users. Ideally, you've run designer hiring processes from start to finish. Even better if you've successfully grown designers at all levels, ranging from junior to more senior designers, providing clear paths for career growth.
• You're an inspiring leader and can facilitate large groups of people through the design process that leads to organizational alignment.
• You can effectively partner with folks from other parts of the company, especially Product Management, and Engineering.
• You have a history of delivering high-quality experiences that you’re proud of either through the teams you've managed or as a product designer yourself.