WHO WE ARE:

ActBlue builds and maintains a powerful online fundraising platform for Democratic campaigns, progressive organizations, and nonprofits working to create a better future. We put power in the hands of small-dollar donors by making it easier for grassroots supporters to make their voices heard and by helping thousands of groups — from presidential candidates to environmental organizations —  build people-powered movements.

If you’ve ever given online to a Democratic candidate or progressive organization, chances are you’ve used our software. We’re a tech-nonprofit organization, and our team has a big impact on the future of our country. Each and every one of us, from the political activists to the tech innovators to the customer service pros, is fully committed to our mission.

THE OPPORTUNITY: 

We are looking for a Director of Product Design & Research to help lead impactful, engaging, and user-centered design for the ActBlue platform. This person will lead our incredible Design & Research team and work with our engineering and product thought partners to help infuse design thinking throughout our product development process.  The ideal candidate will be passionate about surfacing strategic questions to guide our research and design exploration through all stages of the product life cycle.  You will transform the results of research into actionable insights. You will bring fresh ideas and experience for integrating research, design, product development and engineering practices and help our interdisciplinary cohort work seamlessly together across teams and functions.

This person will be a committed mentor, responsible for fostering and growing ActBlue’s team of product designers and researchers. Designers and researchers are embedded on different product teams, each with their own charter, roadmaps, and team of engineers and product managers. You will be cultivating an inclusive environment that brings out the best in your team holistically, and you will be directly managing and mentoring the individual contributors on your team. You will champion, coach, and challenge your team members in concert with supporting the healthy functioning of the entire organization by fostering transparency and engagement, and ensuring successful cross-team communication and knowledge sharing.

WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING:

• Providing product design and research expertise to support designers and researchers of diverse backgrounds and skills, who are embedded on different product teams
• Attracting, developing and maintaining excellent talent, through creating and protecting a sense of belonging and engagement
• Supporting the professional development of your direct reports (supportive feedback, goal-setting, regular check-ins, etc)
• Facilitating creative discovery and feedback sessions, and coaching others in the same
• Working with designers, researchers, product managers, and engineering managers to formulate roadmaps
• Collaborating with your Director of Product teammate to engage with consulting firms to perform large scale research projects
• Ensuring that designers and researchers have the context and resources they need to achieve their goals
• Collaborating with the rest of our product & engineering leadership to continually cultivate a work environment where everyone on the team can thrive

WHAT YOU'LL BRING:

• A generalist design background, with experience in some of the following: user research, information architecture, UX, UI, visual design, prototyping, and/or front-end development.
• An up-to-date understanding of user-centered design and accessibility in modern product design
• Advanced understanding of visual design systems, hierarchy, typography, illustration, color, and composition.
• Motivation to see your team and the individuals on your team succeed
• A track record of success in inclusive management
• A personal commitment to fostering psychologically safe environments for your teams

OUR DESIGN & RESEARCH TEAM PRINCIPLES:

• Collaboration: Unlock possibility and energy by giving everyone the tools they need. Aim for a system that enables designers and engineers to work seamlessly together. Use consistent patterns and natural language to reduce cognitive load on our teams, reducing tech and design debt.

• Scale: Consider the micro and macro. Be near-sighted and far-sighted. Focus on pixel-level details and micro interactions, while also considering how details will ripple out at scale. 

• Clarity: Make it easy for all users to get where they need to go. Help everyone do the next right thing. Use visual consistency and clear language to remove friction and create clear contextual awareness for all users. Be transparent about what is happening or will happen.

• Humanity: Design for sensitivity and accessibility. Humanize our work by designing for accessibility and inclusion. Create experiences with a sense of care, designing for a user’s best and worst days. Build opinionated tools that demonstrate utility and personality.

• Simplicity: Go slow, start small. Be sustainable. Start small and always iterate, keep what works, and take note of what doesn’t.

OUR ENGINEERING VALUES:

• We believe that ideas are more important than technologies.
• We understand that the tools we build have real-world consequences for millions of people and take that responsibility seriously.
• We know that code isn’t just a set of instructions for machines, but communication with other humans; style, elegance, and respect are important.
• We believe that an ability to balance paying off technical debt and rapidly completing a project contributes to the health of the codebase, engineering team, and organization.
• We believe that being correct isn’t enough; respect for your colleagues and users is fundamental.

LOCATION AND COMPENSATION:

We offer autonomy, responsibility, and amazing in-office and remote colleagues getting excited about politics and tech all day, plus generous benefits. You can work in our Somerville, MA HQ or remotely from CA, CO, FL, GA, MD, MA, MI, MN, NH, NY, OR, PA, RI, SC, TX, UT, VT, WA, DC, or WI.

We offer a competitive salary and a generous compensation package, which includes commuter benefits, fully paid health, dental, and vision insurance, an employer-sponsored 401k contribution plan, a generous professional development stipend, paid parental leave for new parents, and a flexible time off policy.  

Women, people of color, LGBTQIA2S+ individuals, and members of other minority or marginalized groups are strongly encouraged to apply. ActBlue is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against candidates on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, or veteran status.

ActBlue cannot at this time sponsor work visas.

*ActBlue will never ask candidates to buy equipment, nor will we email from anything other than an actblue.com or actbluetech.com email address.