Head of Product Design

 

Runyon, in partnership with the world class culture and community center the 92nd Street Y, is incubating a new venture in the digital learning space, and is looking for a founding Head of Product Design to help launch and scale the effort. The business is capitalized through 92Y, has early in-market traction, and enjoys unique access to strategic resources and capabilities across operations, technology and an existing educator network.

We are now looking for a Head of Product to craft and build a best-in-class, user-centered digital learning experience for both educators and learners.  A great candidate would understand how to express business, brand, and growth strategy in both exploratory UX concepts and detailed product specifications. They would have great depth in UX design (including UI / visual design) and a love for fleshing out the details of design systems with a solid understanding of development strategies. They would attract top-tier product design talent with their reputation and portfolio of work. This is a senior, managerial role that combines hands-on design with recruiting and managing a team of designers. Full-time position available.

92nd Street Y is a world-class cultural and community center where people all over the world connect through culture, arts, entertainment and conversation. For over 140 years, we have harnessed the power of arts and ideas to enrich, enlighten and change lives, and the power of community to repair the world. As a proudly Jewish organization, 92Y enthusiastically welcomes and reaches out to people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds while embracing Jewish values like learning and self-improvement, the importance of family, the joy of life, and giving back to our wonderfully diverse and growing community, both locally and around the world.

Runyon is a product design and venture studio that helps companies grow. We are a team of customer-centered designers and strategists that crafts new products, experiences and ventures. Our approach combines customer needs and behaviors with leading edge business strategy. Our work is sprint- and prototype-driven and we think about how we can launch products into market in ways that are meaningful and measured from the start. Our team has decades of experience working with some of the largest global client partners including The New York Times, Disney+, Target and others.

Why Runyon’s Different

  • We're prototyping-led. We lead with tangible assumptions in the form of prototypes and test them with real stakeholders to validate and refine our strategy and design. Regardless of discipline, we think and communicate in concepts, and use those to move further, faster.

  • We're detailed and intentional. We always back up our design decisions with sound reasoning—be it user research, market research, or both. We make things that make sense and that have a clear through line.

  • We're fast. We work almost exclusively in sprints, and with lean teams. We need folks who like to run.

  • We're collaborative. We jam as a multidisciplinary team of specialists who collectively contribute to the full spectrum of work across user research, strategy and design to arrive at high quality outcomes.

Responsibilities

  • Build a best-in-class user-centered design team, recruiting and mentoring experienced designers across disciplines (User Research, UX/UI, Product Design).

  • Shape product strategy and roadmap for new functionality over short- and long-term, guiding teams to refine overall strategy and product design.

  • Engage with design research, design directors, and client partners to understand design success criteria.

  • Generate or translate insights from qualitative design research sessions into UX/UI concepts and iterations.

  • Craft strategically sound concepts, functional and beautiful user flows, and interactive prototypes.

  • Communicate clearly with teammates and senior client stakeholders, and present work appropriately (verbally and in client-facing decks).

Qualifications

  • Demonstrated experience of in-house UX and Product Design crafting impactful products and services, demonstrating leadership and craftsmanship in zero-to-one product/service design, design system creation and implementation.

  • Deep vocabulary of existing UX patterns and modern UI aesthetics, demonstrated in a variety of projects (responsive web).

  • Experience creating and maintaining design systems, including collaboration and communication with engineers and an understanding of development constraints.

  • Expertise setting up Figma files for wireframes, visual designs, prototypes, and design systems.

  • Great communication and time management abilities, including the skill to direct and manage multiple project teams concurrently.

What You Can Share with Us

  • End-to-End Product Case Study: Take us through a product that you designed and launched, from hypothesis to customer insight to UX concept(s) to product designs to launch to iteration.

  • Portfolio Breadth and Depth: Share the breadth of your work and certain verticals where you’ve developed a particular product and depth of strategic focus.

Compensation and Benefits

  • We provide competitive compensation, including equity, cash bonus, healthcare, dental, and 4 weeks vacation.

Sounds like you/interested?

If you are curious and believe that you’d be a fit at this new venture, please apply below.