Product Designer - Small Business Automation Solutions - remote

(Remote, Full Time, Anywhere)

(USD 65-90K annually - see compensation plan details below)

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a UX designer or a UI designer position. This position is primarily concerned with the functional design of the software solution and is focused on making business applications that meet business requirements. Ability to figure out how to create a functional solution is most important in this job. Good UX skills are also necessary for the position but they are secondary.

We are a company that makes custom software solutions for small businesses with complex operational flow in specific niches such as custom manufacturing, concierge medicine, and financial services. The purpose of our software solutions is to automate parts of their business operations by having the software solutions either completely automate the execution of various business tasks or automate the organization, delegation or management of such tasks. These solutions are custom and are composed of internal business systems (such as heavily customized and functionally extended by us CRM and ERP systems) combined with the external systems (such as client portals) and various back end connections that allow to interact with external parties as needed.

The product designer in our company is an individual who makes functional software decisions for each of our projects, designs and defines all of the functionality and how it needs to be carried out based on the well defined business requirements and detailed business processes that are put together and documented by our business consulting team. The designs produced by the product designer are also serving as functional specification for the software engineering team that builds the software solution based on these functional designs. As such the product designer is fully responsible for all functionality of the software solution they are in charge of and it is their job to make sure that the produced solution fully meets the business requirements and ends up doing the business job.

We are looking for responsible people who are genuinely interested in designing quality working and functioning software products and want to work in our no-nonsense environment focused on production and results with straightforward management and rewards for meaningful completed production.

Deep Consulting Solutions ("DCS") is a provider of high quality automation solutions for small businesses in custom manufacturing and concierge services industries. Our clients have businesses that require a lot of decisions to be made for servicing each of their clients and a lot of manual work has to be done in order to deliver their offering because their services are very personalized to each client. They have trouble growing their operations as it is hard to control these complicated services at scale and without effective supervision they will not be able to provide high quality. What we offer them is the ability to have automation do the supervision and management of the work that needs to be done (by deciding what needs to be done, instructing the employee what to do and then monitor completion), and in some cases carry out the work itself (when tasks can be entirely carried out by software, such as collect and process information) removing or lowering the dependency on humans in the process.

We deliver these automations by creating a custom software solution for each client based on the situation of their business and what will make sense for it. The produced software solution itself is a custom solution that combines several pieces of software such as CRM and ERP systems used for internal organization and processing in the business (which we heavily customize and extend functionally to accommodate our business requirements), custom applications (such as web portals for clients, vendors, partners, etc.) connected to them, and various integrations with third party solutions used in the business process (e.g. data sources, payment gateways, etc.). The overall solution works like a well coordinated integrated system and executes the needed business processes and requirements well and effectively.

In our delivery model, we put a very high emphasis on proper separation of responsibilities and division of labor. We make very clear the distinction between business model and business process decisions, functional software decisions, and technical decisions and we delegate each of them to separate kinds of professionals.

Before we start making any software solutions, our business consulting team will carry out an extremely thorough study of the business operations of the client and build out a detailed business model of their company. The business consulting team will evaluate the business, lay out the business improvements to be implemented by DCS and then create detailed business models and processes which would have all of these business improvements implemented into the actual business process, with all the business model issues sorted out, and detailed business requirements formulated for the software solution that is to be added to this new set of business processes, laying out precise logic and making all the decisions about any unclear business processes. This package of business processes and requirements is thoroughly reviewed and also verified with the DCS client to make sure that fully relevant requirements are formulated for the software team and that no significant ambiguities or requirement changes will need to follow. Only when everything is cleared and approved is the business requirement package passed to the software solution making.

The software solution then is made.

First, the functional design team (consisting of Product Designers assigned to the project) evaluates business requirements and makes sure all is clear and then proceeds to make a detailed functional design of the entire solution, which is carried out through our multi-step process beginning with a high level functional concept only upon which the detailed implementation decisions are made which ends up with detailed designs that are ready to pass to development team. The process also incorporates well-defined review points and involves both the business consulting team to verify business requirements match and the software engineering team to make sure that technically the most sensible and feasible solution is chosen. The process is designed to minimize the need for any refactoring or changes to produced designs and is supposed to catch errors or misunderstandings early on. On completion, the final product is reviewed and approved to go to the engineering team for build.

The engineering team then builds the software solution based on these designs, and should any issues arise during the build process, the engineers will escalate them to the Product Designers and resolve them as needed. The design documentation is also used by Quality Assurance team to test and compare the solution to ensure successful build by the engineering team. Once engineers finish their build, the software solution is tested and assessed for its durability with all bugs subsequently fixed. On completion of build and testing, the design team itself will assess the solution and approve that the build met all of their expectations.

Following that, our business consulting team will plan the business rollout of the solution, once the client approves the implementation. The functional design and engineering team will then be required to carry out the needed steps in the process (e.g. plan information transfer, etc.) such that a functional solution will be implemented.

DCS's key advantage is the ability to carefully pack tremendous amounts of value and functionality into a fairly quick and relatively inexpensive development and implementation. This is accomplished by sticking to a rigid and efficient waterfall model, whereby there is a very clear understanding of requirements and objectives on each project and these requirements rarely change in the process. DCS serves small businesses that are generally established in their industry and thus have a pretty well tried out business processes and DCS's scope with the client is well defined and all the business process decisions are made clearly before the project ever gets to the software making. We do not work with startups who constantly change their strategy or with big companies who have trouble deciding on their strategy and have to constantly rethink it and continuously add features to their products - this allows the design team to work with very clear requirements and defined scope - and as such, while some iteration does occur in the process during the various internal review loops, the design team in general is well set up to do things right the first time - it also means that the design team can focus on their key focus area - which is to make functional solutions to meet defined business requirements. The absence of constantly changing requirements also means that all the needed steps in the process can always be executed correctly and diligently and proper attention can be paid to each important consideration.

The design process has 3 key steps that effectively separate dependencies and allow for efficient delivery of projects: 

The Product Designer is a center person in the design process and assumes the responsibility for the functional solution produced. The main job of the product designer is to meet the business requirements with a functional and effective software solution - as described in detail above.

The Product Designer in DCS is not a UX designer and this job does not involve things such as user research - at this time we do not make apps with tens of thousands of users and we do not need to engage in extensive user feedback collection exercises. This job also is not centered around "empathetic design" or some other UX cliches. The job also does not involve proposing things to clients or running briefings of any kind or negotiating requirements. If you want your job to involve these things, then please do not apply.

UX does have some place in this job, as obviously the software solution produced needs to provide an acceptable UX standard for its situation, which is different - for example, customer facing sales funnel interfaces need to have a relatively high UX standard, however some internal rarely used settings interfaces can do with not-so-good UX, so long as functional purpose is accomplished. User goals also need to be considered when making functional designs, however, they should not necessarily be the main decision driver behind design decisions - the software that DCS makes is made to serve the interests of the owner of the DCS client company - and that interest needs to be best accomplished - decisions about the business goals are made by the business consulting team in advance and are well documented and well explained to the product designer in writing.

The Product Designer, while not an engineer, also needs to have a good understanding of the basics of the technical functionality of the software. It is critical to understand how the software will logically work behind the scenes - and while coding and technical design are not part of this job, understanding of how tech works on the logical level is critical here and the Product Designer, in order to be able to execute the job, needs to be able to understand how technically the functionality will be achieved in order to properly make decisions about implementations.

The Product Designer also needs to understand the platforms that DCS uses - and have a good understanding of the functional capabilities and limitations of them - the Product Designer will need to research them and if necessary direct proof of concepts - the Product Designer will over time be expected to become a functional expert in the various platforms used by DCS - e.g. Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho Desk, DCS's own reusable components, etc.

The Product Designer will be assessed by the quality of solutions produced and by the timeliness and effectiveness of execution. Product Designers who show very good quality at a detailed level consistently and at the same time organize themselves successfully in such a way that they optimize their work for most results are valued by the company. The Product Designer's solutions speak for themselves, but they also need to be backed up by effective conduct that enables effective production within DCS's conduct - careful planning and effective organization of the process is essential to be successful in the role long term, of course quality still being most important. It is also critical to pay due attention to matters and exercise due diligence when making design decisions - this has direct impact on the error rate and the consequences of such errors - the fewer errors the Product Designer makes in designs, the more valuable the Product Designer is to the company.

We are a No-BS small business. The company has around 20 staff members working remotely all over the world and the owner is very heavily involved in running the business - there are no traditional departments, little-to-no middle management, and thus no managers' egos that need to be appeased - bottom line, the job needs to get done and the deliverables need to be produced to a high quality and the production is all that matters - and that production is closely monitored by the business owner and is then used to evaluate employees and make decisions about them - the owner rewards effective producers and penalizes or expels ineffective ones. The following is expected of every single member of the organization:

Regular Annual Pay of USD 65-90K which consists of:

An exact offer will be given to the successful candidate upon completing the hiring process based on assessed candidate's ability as evaluated. Above ranges given based on assumption of Middle and Senior candidate levels.

Highly effective and result producing performance can merit additional bonuses. Hired staff is regularly evaluated with appropriate adjustments to pay if applicable. Exceptional and proven staff can get higher responsibilities as the company grows potentially including management functions which will be rewarded accordingly.

Q: Are specific UI Skills Required for this job?

A: Not really. The UI making, as mentioned above, has been delegated to dedicated UI Designer. The Product Designer will review the UI made by the UI Designer, so an understanding of what makes a good UI is needed, but the Product Designer won't be making UI in this job, except for perhaps exceptional small occurrences where small and basic UI piece is needed and no UI Designer resource is available - but in such case no high fidelity UI will be necessary. 

Q: Does the job involve meeting clients?

A: No (with very small exceptions). As mentioned in the Delivery Process section, the business analysts carry out all the requirements formulation that is done based upon their study of the client business and generally it is the business analyst who plans the implementations and coordinates most client related engagements regarding the project (with the rest being done by DCS Owner). The Product Designer is thus free to focus on the making of the solution and doesn't get distracted by client engagement or changing requirements (as all requirements are clear upfront). The only rare case when a Product Designer may participate in a client meeting is when presenting a design to the client to get feedback (which is what we do in some projects before passing designs to engineering team, although by far not in all of them as usually the business requirements and processes are clear enough and there is no need for soliciting design feedback from clients and thus no need to spend time on this) - in this rare case the interaction with the client will be led either by the business analyst or DCS Owner, and the Product Designer will be one of the participants of the meeting and will act as an expert of the matters of the solution designed.

Q: If everyone is remote and all over the planet, how are meetings arranged?

A: So far we haven't had any problems coordinating with everybody's schedules to get the project done. We do not have large corporate meetings going on every day (which are almost always useless in companies that have them), and the only structured meeting that the Product Designers attend is a meeting that is held twice a week on Monday and Friday to coordinate the actions of the design team and the engineering team and check in on open issues. Outside of that, the only meetings that exist for Product Designers are those that arise ad-hoc for project specific needs when something needs to be discussed or clarified and cannot be resolved through text chat or comments and those are set whenever people who need to meet agree to meet. Most communication is handled through written channels and it works very well for everyone.