Head of Technical UX Design
On-siteSeattle, Washington, United States
Job Summary
Define and own the UX and visual design vision for Noisy Creek's digital properties, establishing a cohesive design language across The Stranger, Portland Mercury, Chicago Reader, and EverOut while preserving each publication's distinct voice. Own end-to-end design for websites, email templates, and future mobile app explorations, from concept through shipped experience. Build and maintain a scalable design system and component library, then partner directly with engineering to translate designs into shipped product. Conduct user research and usability testing to validate decisions, establish accessibility and brand standards, and build the business case for growing a design function. Manage hiring, mentoring, and team scaling as approved. This hands-on leadership role supports reader growth, membership conversion, and ad performance goals within a lean, fast-moving organization.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years of UX/product design experience
- experience owning end-to-end design for a consumer-facing digital product at scale
- A strong portfolio demonstrating range across web, email/marketing design, and ideally early-stage mobile app design or prototyping
- Experience building or evolving a design system or component library used across multiple products or brands
- Experience partnering directly with engineers to take designs from concept to shipped product, including familiarity with technical and implementation constraints
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- the ability to present and defend design decisions to both design and non-design audiences, including executive leadership
- Experience conducting or commissioning user research and using it to inform design decisions
- Comfort operating with significant autonomy in a lean, fast-moving organization
- a willingness to be hands-on with details as well as strategy
Desired Qualifications
- Experience designing for media, publishing, membership/subscription products, or email marketing at scale
- Experience designing across multiple brands or a multi-tenant design system
- People management experience
- experience building the case for a team before it exists
- Experience operating as the sole/first design hire in an organization, standing up process and craft standards from scratch
- Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG)
- familiarity with email development/rendering constraints across clients
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