Director, User Experience

WHO WE ARE:

ActBlue is a nonprofit that builds tech and infrastructure for Democratic campaigns, progressive-aligned causes, and people trying to make an impact in order to fuel long-term, people-powered change. If you’ve ever given online to a Democrat or progressive organization, chances are you’ve used our powerful online fundraising platform.

We put power in the hands of small-dollar donors and help thousands of groups — from presidential candidates to environmental organizations — build grassroots movements. We envision a democracy where everyone looking to make progressive people-powered change can easily and effectively deploy their resources, energy, and creativity to shape our country and futures. Each and every one of us, from the political activists to the tech innovators to the customer service pros, is fully committed to our mission.

THE OPPORTUNITY: 

The Director of User Experience is responsible for leading ActBlue’s diverse and talented team of UX designers and researchers. This team works to uncover user needs, advocate for the user experience, and partners with software engineers, product managers, data scientists, and marketing teams to deliver best-in-class product experiences. These experiences give Democrats and progressives an advantage in political and nonprofit fundraising, and allow all our donors to give with ease and confidence. This role reports directly to the Vice President of Product.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

• Lead user experience holistically across the ActBlue software product, including the design process, design system, and experience strategy, as well as the UX research activities that inform these. 
• Thoughtfully scale your department with the right structures, roles, and responsibilities, and confidently lead through a time of change and ambiguity to build a strong user experience team and community of practice in a fully remote/distributed environment.
• Ensure your team of designers and researchers have what they need to thrive, grow, and deliver great work. This includes defining design processes; providing direction, mentorship and development opportunities for both junior and senior team members; constructively resolving conflict; and fostering a collaborative and inclusive work culture.
• Lead meetings, workshops, presentations, and other activities that drive innovation, socialize research insights, inform and influence executive leadership, and build cross-functional alignment across the organization.
• Represent the user experience side of the product leadership triad of product management, user experience, and engineering, and collaborate with peers in leadership as a key strategic partner for important product decisions; align roadmap, UX and product development activities in an agile environment; and champion prioritization of high-impact product development efforts grounded in user research and a strong understanding of organizational and movement-wide context and goals.
• Partner effectively with creative and research peers in marketing to ensure a consistent and cohesive brand experience across all of ActBlue’s touchpoints and to build a coherent 360 degree view of all of ActBlue’s users.
• Manage team budget and participate in quarterly and annual planning activities.

WHAT YOU BRING:

• You have 8+ years of hands-on and 5+ years of people leadership experience in product design and research roles, with a proven ability to influence at the executive level and drive design and research activities throughout the product lifecycle.
• You have experience building and leading both small and scrappy teams and working in mature UX organizations, and know how to manage through the inflection points and pitfalls that come with growth and managing through change. 
• You are a manager who invests in your people, and you take pride in your ability to leverage your team’s strengths, recruit great talent, develop individual team members, and build diverse, cohesive, collaborative, and empowered teams, enabling them to do the best work of their careers. 
• You are a strategic systems thinker with a pragmatic and adaptable approach to design and research. You apply best practices, but are always on the lookout for new approaches to try; you know when to run a quick and dirty experiment and when to plan for scale, and you know when to push to look at more data and when to just make a judgment call.
• You’re a compelling presenter with strong listening, persuasion, and facilitation skills, whether you’re interviewing users, hashing through technical tradeoffs, or presenting at an org-wide all hands. You know when to adjust your focus, vocabulary, and level of detail according to the audience and the goal of the conversation.
• You are dedicated