The Company
We’re the team behind Matrix—the leading project for secure, open decentralised communication and Element— the all-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Our mission is to make messaging as open as email— allowing everyone to choose where their data is hosted, enjoy private conversations and ultimately be in control of their own communication.
We build open alternatives to apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Teams &more. Our early adopters include The French Government, and open source communities like Mozilla, KDE, GNOME and Wikimedia, while we’re working towards gaining traction in personal messaging.
We build things for everyone, and we know we can’t succeed without a diverse team. Our hiring process is designed to be respectful and give candidates the best chance to show us what you can do. If we ever fall down on this, please let us know.
The Role
We are looking for Product Design Manager who would support the members of our Product teams while doing their job and helping them deliver the best outcomes.
You’ll ensure that everyone has the opportunity to further develop their skillset, make sure their career growth is taken care of and have you to turn to for mentorship.
Building the Design organisation will also be your task, introducing new rituals if needed and upholding the communication channels between people, motivating others for skill sharing so that everyone can be on top of their work.
You’ll join as Element’s first design manager, having a hand in growing design at a rapidly growing and evolving company. It’s greenfield in that you’ll be first, but you’ll also pair with an inspirational team of engineering managers and existing leadership within the company
You’ll be doing good: you’re building Open Source, Openly Federated and End-to-End Encrypted messaging that gives free, private, self-sovereign communications infrastructure to the world.
Requirements
- You have “done it before”, meaning, a strong track record of designing products which users love
- Fostered good collaboration cross-functionally, closely with engineering and product
- Experience in recruiting and managing designers, and building design teams
- You have a strong technical aptitude. No need for an engineering background, but you should be able to grasp the domain we work in and be able to explain it to non engineers, relay the values behind our product and be part of technically complex discussions.
- You should be well organised, with top notch communication skills
- Be a strong facilitator, who can empathise with others and support them in their journey
Nice to have
- Some kind of writing/content production (blog, twitter, medium account, etc) illustrating curious or measured thought
- Previously working on messaging products, consumer-facing SaaS platforms or open source technologies
Benefits
Our general approach is to treat people like adults and acknowledge that by being flexible we create an environment for people to do their best work. For more details here is our manifesto. That said specific points that differentiate us include:
- Yearly bonus and meaningful equity options.
- Since our technology is relevant to anything that requires real-time comms, the role provides exposure to a wide range of domains from web and app dev through to VR, VoIP and IoT.
- Generous holiday allowance, private healthcare for you and your family and opportunities for development and progression as we scale.
- Family friendly environment;many of the team have small children and we look to accommodate that as best we can.
- People tend to stay with the company for a long time, we take this as a sign that we have a cohesive, supportive culture, that we have engaging challenging work and that people can develop their skills and careers here for the long term.
Element does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, colour, religion, age, national origin, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason prohibited by law in provision of employment opportunities and benefits.