We are looking for a Director of UI/UX with a fascination for creating captivating, breakthrough designs to lead our SendGrid UX team and be responsible for innovating and delivering high quality design across platforms and devices. You will collaborate with designers, researchers, business stakeholders, product managers, and developers to shape the user experience of our of products and services. The qualified candidate will be a dynamic individual with a demonstrated passion for design excellence and a proven track record of success in managing and partnering within a product organization in the software industry. This individual must demonstrate an entrepreneurial, highly motivated, leadership style with a focused and a disciplined approach to the product development process, and achieving design excellence, performance and quality.

What You'll do:

• Drive all aspects of leading and managing the SendGrid design team composed of experienced and highly motivated designers and front end engineers
• Build a team of highly talented and best-of-class designers and front end engineers; recruit, hire, train, motivate and retain excellent staff, establish performance expectations, and regularly and consistently measure performance against expectations
• Foster and support a collaborative, innovative culture
• Position SendGrid design and its products effectively by driving technical and domain thought leadership through the refinement and incorporation of standards, new technologies and platforms, best-of-breed techniques and technologies
• Lead the concept development, design ideation, and execution of customer-centered design solutions that support strategic business programs
• Drive the design team within very tight deadlines. Creating a sense of immediacy with better processes, partnering and quality focus
• Partner with other executives, product managers, engineers across the business to drive common design practices and best practice user experience
• Oversee multiple projects simultaneously from planning to launch
• Build effective relationships with cross-functional teams; establish escalation and communication paths as well as training and development of staff
• Work with Product and Engineering leads to balance market requirements with internal business needs and the anticipation of future trends in the discovery and delivery of business requirements
• Responsible for the delivery of high quality designs and establishing organization-wide standards and best practices, including policies, procedures and workflow, and implement tools to support the process

 About You:

• MFA, BFA or BS in Interactive Design, Graphic Design, or equivalent experience
• Design experience: At least 10 + year’s total experience. Background in Product Design, Interaction Design, or Information Design
• Must be well versed in all areas of UI design with a history of creating elegant and effective user experiences.
• 5+ years experience as a key leadership member of a UI team participating in the complete product development lifecycle of several successfully launched web and/or software applications
• Strong design skills including screen layouts, final production art, UI flow modeling, information design, typography, color, composition, and UI specifications
• Solid understanding of the design of Web applications and services. Need to have superb information design sensibility and a sound understanding of how to leverage user research effectively
• Must have solid grasp of web design principles and good understanding of current web technologies (Html5, CSS3, Mobile UI, JavaScript)
• Track record of proven experience implementing industry leading usability research and reporting
• In depth knowledge of cross-device design principles and experience in mobile/tablet space
• Must have strong analytical and oral communication skills; excellent interpersonal and leadership skills; able to collaborate effectively with others in a cross-functional team.
• Strong knowledge and keen interest in emerging tools and technologies in the industry.
• Excellent problem solving skills
• Experience working in an agile environment and with rapid prototyping