Head Of Digital Design

Full Time Job
Head Of Digital Design, NBC News Group

Responsibilities
At the NBC News Group, we're responsible for the best, most important news brands in the industry, including NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, and Today. We care passionately about news and our ability to help our customers to get informed and inspired about what's important to them (and us.) We're looking for a collaborative, thoughtful, empowering leader to join our rapidly growing team as our new Head of Product Design, and we're hoping it might be you! Here's what would make a great match for us:

You're deeply customer-centric in leading a design organization, taking the view that great products only work if they're uniquely valuable and highly usable to your users (as well as feasible for your business and technology.) That's the challenge you love, to deliver experiences that meet customer and business needs iteratively and quickly, and balance process and productivity with craft and creative exploration.

You're an persuasive evangelist for the impact that great design and user experience can have, and create opportunities to show it in your day-to-day work. You encourage yourself and your teams to think creatively, take risks, and keep learning about new technologies, design patterns, and trends to fuel that creativity. You're also enthusiastic and knowledgeable about extending the insights of design across the organization with techniques like human-centered design, design thinking, and product discovery.

It's a given that you're a highly talented product designer and creative, but you're perhaps even more skilled at directing, supporting and guiding other designers to achieve their best work. And you're the one that can connect it all together to ensure a truly delightful experience in the holistic ecosystem of products, platforms, and features. Your team doesn't have to have a lot of back and forth of approvals and reviews, because they're working closely and regularly with you and each other to balance consistency with innovation.

As a manager and a leader, you understand the power of a motivated design team. You have a vision for how the practice of design can thrive in a digital organization, and are excited to show your team how great it can be. A cornerstone for you is fostering an environment of learning and for your teams, so that they're always growing in their skills, knowledge, and relationships. You work hard to ensure that your team's time is well spent, prioritizing competing needs elegantly so they know their work has meaning.

You lead by example and have consistently built strong bonds and relationships across your organization thanks to demonstrable, deep integrity and accountability. You're highly collaborative and couldn't imagine not partnering constantly with product, engineering, editorial, broadcast, and marketing colleagues. You're a great speaker, presenter, and storyteller, but an even better listener. Empathy and open-mindedness are fundamental for you in understanding your customers' needs as well as building a culture where your designers, design managers, and partners feel respected and valued. And as they say, you take your work seriously but not yourself seriously! This job is where you want to be, and what you want to be doing... and you can't imagine doing anything else.

Your responsibilities include:
• Leading and managing a world-class team of product designers and design managers
• Developing the team through recruiting, training, mentoring, and ongoing coaching
• Defining and driving design vision, strategy, and principles across the organization
• Inspiring and motivating the design team and broader cross-functional team to execute on that vision
• Delivering elegant, delightful, usable, cohesive end-to-end customer experiences across a portfolio of news brands and products
• Enhancing your team's ability to execute consistently, rapidly, and effectively through process and craft (e.g. DesignOps)
• Aligning, articulating, and leading objectives for your teams to achieve desired outcomes
• Providing creative thought leadership to your leaders, peers, and team
• Connecting with design leaders across the org (e.g. television, marketing, editorial) to drive a shared ethos, continuity and community
• Building a culture of collaboration, inspiration, and continuous innovation
• Advancing the design community through industry events, publishing articles, and contributing to craft

Qualifications
/Requirements
• 10 years of experience as a product designer with

successful outcomes for multi-platform digital news

products reaching millions of users
• 5 years of experience as a leader and manager of

successful design managers and product designers

Desired Characteristics

• A proven ability to develop others, both as a manager

and as a peer
• A strong track record of identifying, recruiting,

developing, and retaining talent
• Extensive experience with human-centered design and

UX practices, user research methods, and design tools
• Deep expertise in translating user needs, behaviors, and motivations into strategic, actionable design strategies
• A strong understanding of how business metrics and

qualitative and quantitative data connect to design
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills,

especially with articulating complex concepts to key

stakeholders and executives
• Experience with design thinking and product discovery
• Experience with television, national, business, and/or

lifestyle news a plus
• A willingness to get hands-on with design
• A sense of humor and gratitude for others