Humbly Confident Product Designer - remote

We build “You Need a Budget,” the best budgeting software around. (But people in the know call us YNAB, which is pronounced “why-nab.”) For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. Google us, or read some of our reviews on the app store, and you’ll see what we mean. We love building something that has a huge positive impact on people’s lives.

We’re a software ecosystem that includes personal budgeting apps for web, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Android phones. Our mission is to make sure the whole world knows that a budget is the best life and financial planning tool ever invented—and help make it simple and joyful to use one.

If you’re the product designer we’re looking for, you have experience designing great interfaces and experiences for most of the platforms listed above. More importantly, you’re a designer who views your job as that of a problem solver. You have a knack for interaction design and love logical UI patterns, but you also foster a deep empathy for people. We design our software to fit our customers more than our fancy, and you enjoy digging through (and conducting!) research that leads the way in the design process. You’ve been around the block a few times and know what it means to design a mature, evolving product. 

That’s a super-brief intro to what we’re looking for. But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. Let’s talk a bit about life at YNAB, and then we’ll go into more detail about this role. 

We’re profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB was founded in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re in it for the long haul. We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our original Core Values Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’ll probably really like it here, and we can’t wait to hear from you!

We live our Core Values every day at YNAB, and we mean it when we say we are an equal opportunity employer. We believe that a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, beliefs, and experiences are critical to our success, and we are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team who loves working together to build something that matters.

We also work really hard, together, to make working at YNAB an amazing experience, and we were (humbly) proud to be named Fortune’s #1 Best Small Company to Work For for the last two years. We have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. We’d love to introduce you to a few of them!

We’re talking product design here, so you’ll be working with a lot of different people. We can’t even list them all, really. So we’ll start with a few of your seven fellow product designers: Alan, Cindy, Dylan, Emily, and Adam. 

Alan can be seen wearing many hats—and loving every second of it. He could be interviewing customers one day and programming a prototype in Framer the next. He loves exploring ideas with teammates and lives for that rush when the team discovers a novel solution to a difficult problem. When he’s not busy designing, he’s probably either at the gym or working to improve his culinary skills... or contemplating the conflicts that occasionally arise between the two.

Cindy sweats the small details when it comes to crafting simple, intuitive experiences. Her favorite part about the design process is learning from our customers to understand their needs. She makes research and user testing a top priority in her workflow. In her downtime, you can bet she’s starting another home improvement project—which she swears she’ll finish soon—or hiking with her dog, Summit.

Dylan loves all things design, especially getting to the simplicity found on the other side of complexity. Above his desk (ahem, kitchen table, it's a small apartment after all) sits an inconspicuous letterpressed card with Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design on it. In his spare time he's probably doing something active, watching a film, taking photos, practicing piano, reading a book. 

Emily is a design generalist, through and through. What she loves most about being a designer—besides the obvious draw of working with a team to build things people love—is how much there is to learn. Right now she's focused on honing her coding skills enough to be able to put up the occasional pull request as well as practicing the art of writing great microcopy. She enjoys reading books, cooking, biking, lifting weights, and spending time outdoors. 

Adam is a product designer from Ireland who loves to focus on how people experience YNAB, especially first-time users. He obsesses over the small details, while keeping the bigger picture in mind. You'll probably find him living in Figma, thinking about solutions to problems or finding new ways to approach things. When he's not busy with design, he'll be spending time with his two boys, Charlie and Max, and his wonderful partner, Annie!

And as we said above, you’ll also cross paths with—well—probably everyone else. People like Chris and Sophie (a couple of our engineers), Hannah or Jacob (both product managers), Jannelle (one of our technical support managers), and Kelly (our product marketing specialist).

Now that you’ve met some of your potential future teammates, let’s talk more about YNAB as a company. Here’s how we operate:

We’re a fully remote team, so you can live and work wherever you want (with a reliable internet connection!). That said, you’ll be working predominantly with folks based in North America, so we expect that you’ll be willing and able to work North American hours for a significant portion of your time. Proximity doesn’t influence productivity, but it sure does help with communication sometimes.

We want everyone to have a full life outside of YNAB, and we seldom work more than 40 hours per week. There have been a few occasions where things got busy and people had to put some extra time in. But then they took some extra time off, so it all balances out. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul.

We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for our company-wide December break). It’s important to get plenty of downtime and get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your adventures in our #office_wall or #travel Slack channel!

When the pandemic isn’t keeping us from traveling, we get the teams together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. So far, we’ve done Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, and most recently, Laguna Beach. We work together, play together, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a team and company. Every year, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together.

We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. We budget for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, online courses and subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new… it’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing.  

Our team is spread all over the world, including Switzerland, Argentina, Scotland, Canada, and all over the United States. We currently set up team members who live in the U.S. or U.K. as employees, and those who live in other countries as independent contractors. You’re an equal part of the team no matter where you live!

For full-time W2 employees in the U.S., we offer fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. No need to check your vision, you read that right—100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, NBD, we’ve got you covered!

We also have a Traditional and Roth 401(k) option. YNAB matches your contributions up to six percent, and matches vest immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.) For U.K. employees, we also contribute six percent to your pension.

The starting salary range for this position is $98,000 - $121,000 USD annually. We consider raises every year, and have a bi-annual profit-share bonus, which you’re in on from day one. YNAB wins, you win—that kind of thing.

If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now we want to talk about you, and how you’ll play a big part in changing people’s lives.

Our goal is for every customer to achieve life-changing financial control—and for the whole planet to realize it’s possible. No small thing, right? In 2022, we’re focused on making YNAB effortless for new budgeters from their very first experience, and also helping all customers see YNAB fit their needs—functional, social, and emotional—as they resolve financial struggles.

Finally, the success of a designer at YNAB hinges upon the ability to approach design as holistic problem solving for both customer and business goals. We work collaboratively here and you’ll listen to ideas, questions, and critiques from teammates with grace and patience. That said, you know your stuff and can eloquently and logically explain design decisions. You see this type of exchange as critical to the success of yourself and our product: it is through sharing ideas and being open to the brilliance of others that we arrive at the best solutions.

We’re excited to hear from you!

P.S. We'll send you a confirmation email once you apply. Please add that email to your safe sender list, to ensure that future emails come through. (If you don’t receive it, please check your Promotions inbox, junk folder, or any filters you may have set up.)

P.P.S. If you’re not interested in or available for this position, but know someone who is, we would really appreciate it if you passed this along!