Senior Product Designer, Independent Agents

CURRENT ROOT EMPLOYEES - Please apply using the career page in Workday. This career site is for external applicants only.

The Opportunity

The UX team at Root Insurance is a collaborative, high-impact group on a mission to redefine insurance by designing products and experiences our customers love. Root’s broader mission is to unbreak insurance through data and technology to improve the lives of our customers. We believe in that mission deeply—and we take it seriously.

Here are three things we think you should know about this role and our team:

Culture

We’re a small, young team working together to build something great. A core part of our vision is to create a culture and workplace that’s unique—somewhere people actually enjoy showing up to. We aim to do this by hiring people who love their craft and are passionate about what they do. We also look for people who are kind, humble, and willing to be real with each other. If that sounds like your kind of place, we’d love to meet you!

How we view product design
We believe product designers should be part researcher, part psychologist, and part product manager. Great designers could make great PMs—but we just love our craft too much to make the switch. To us, that means taking high levels of co-ownership over product vision and strategy, and feeling true accountability for building effective, robust product roadmaps—and helping ensure they’re delivered well.

What You Should Expect in This Role
You can buy insurance directly from a carrier online, through a licensed captive agent who works for a specific carrier, or through a licensed independent agent who helps you compare quotes across carriers. Approximately a third of all insurance policies are purchased through this third category—independent agents, who are your primary customer. These agents are valuable to consumers because they guide people through the process, help them feel confident in their coverage choices, and handle the shopping on their behalf. It’s a big, dynamic space—and while we won’t cover everything here, you’ll be responsible for helping Root better understand and serve these agents. That includes assisting with service design and improving the Root Agent Platform: our tool built specifically for independent agents.

Insurance isn’t an industry known for great design or beloved products—and we’re passionate about changing that. That said, we don’t have it all figured out yet. In this role, you’ll need to be comfortable working in a fast-paced, often ambiguous environment. While we’re committed to building the systems and structures that enable great, focused work, we know there’s still work to do.

If any or all of this excites you, we’d love to meet you.

Other Notes
 Root is a "work where it works best" company. While we have an HQ office in Columbus, OH, where we gather a few times per year, we support working from any U.S. location.

💡 Please provide a PDF or web link to your portfolio. Applications without a portfolio will not be considered.

How You Will Make an Impact

• Help us break into and win in the independent agent market

• Conduct user research, define user journeys, and refine personas to better understand independent agents

• Co-create and contribute to a product vision that improves both business outcomes and customer experiences

• Help build a high-performing product design team by embedding excellence and customer-centric design into our systems

• Integrate product design into the development lifecycle as first-class citizens and co-owners of strategy and roadmap

• Mentor and support junior designers, elevating the overall craft of the team

What You Will Need to Succeed

• 3–5+ years of product design experience with a proven track record of delivering high-quality, user-centered solutions

• Strong written and verbal communication skills to clearly explain and document how you arrive at your solutions

• Ability to speak the language of product and business to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams

• A systematic approach to design using design thinking frameworks and first-principles thinking

• Passion for people and a deep love of your craft

• Excellent facilitation and workshop skills

• Fun to work with and be around

• Strong sense of accountability and ownership

Preferred but Not Required

• Interest in experimenting with AI tools to increase efficiency and creativity

• Experience working in a fast-moving environment, such as a startup

• Experience designing for mobile apps or mobile-first products

As part of Root's interview process, we kindly ask that all candidates be on camera for virtual interviews. This helps us create a more personal and engaging experience for both you and our interviewers. Being on camera is a standard requirement for our process and part of how we assess fit and communication style, so we do require it to move forward with any applicant's candidacy. If you have any concerns, feel free to let us know once you are contacted. We’re happy to talk it through.

Don’t meet every single requirement?

Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Root, Inc., we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway!

Join us

At Root, we judge people based on the merit of their work, not who they are. If you are passionate about what this role entails and solving real problems, we encourage you to apply. We want to learn about you and what you can add to our team.

Who we are

We’re harnessing the power of technology to revolutionize insurance. Using machine learning and mobile telematic platforms, we’ve built one of the most innovative FinTech companies in the world. And we’re just getting started.

What draws people to Root

Our success is in large part due to our unwavering standards in hiring. We recognize that our products are only as good as the people building and promoting them. We want individuals who find solutions by going through the cycle of ideation to implementation with curiosity, rigor, and an analytical lens. Ask anyone who works here and you’ll hear similar reasons for why they joined:

Autonomy—for assertive self-starters, the opportunities to contribute are limitless.

Impact—by challenging the way it’s always been done, we solve problems that have a big impact on our business.

Collaboration—we encourage rich discussion and civil debate at every turn.

People—we are inspired by the collection of crazy-smart people around us.