Lead Product Designer, Operate

📋 Description

• • As a Lead Product Designer on the Operate team at Highlightta Inc., supporting Zipline, you will be instrumental in shaping the future of frontline work. This role offers a unique opportunity to own the design strategy and user experience for a critical pillar of Zipline's platform, focusing on the "Operate" component. This pillar is the central engine that empowers frontline teams in industries like retail, healthcare, and logistics to manage tasks, adhere to compliance requirements, and communicate effectively, often under demanding conditions and on mobile devices.
• • You will be responsible for driving design strategy and execution across complex, multi-quarter initiatives. This involves tackling challenges within task management, compliance workflows, and operational communication, ensuring that solutions are not only functional but also elegant and intuitive. Your work will directly impact how thousands of frontline employees perform their daily duties, making their jobs easier and their businesses more effective.
• • A key aspect of this role is the creation of new patterns and interaction paradigms. You will be expected to go beyond existing solutions, designing innovative ways for users to navigate multi-step workflows and complex information, simplifying intricate processes without sacrificing depth or functionality.
• • You will also play a significant role in the evolution of the design system. This includes identifying opportunities to create new, reusable platform patterns that will benefit multiple product areas and ensure consistency and efficiency across the Zipline platform.
• • Delivering work of the highest polish is paramount. You will be crafting interfaces that are not only visually appealing but also exceptionally user-friendly, making complex operations feel seamless and straightforward for the end-user.
• • Prototyping will be a crucial tool in your arsenal. You will adapt prototype fidelity to suit various needs, using them to inspire stakeholders, validate design concepts, and facilitate clear communication and alignment throughout the development process.
• • Collaboration is at the heart of this position. You will define design strategy in close partnership with cross-functional teams, actively shaping the problem definition and the overall approach to solutions, rather than just focusing on execution.
• • You will proactively identify new problems and opportunities for the Operate team to address, and you will be responsible for defining success metrics for major initiatives, ensuring that design efforts are aligned with business objectives.
• • Deep user understanding is essential. You will plan, conduct, and synthesize both qualitative and quantitative research to gain profound insights into user motivations, behaviors, and business goals. This research will be the foundation for your design decisions.
• • You will act as a strong advocate for the user's perspective across the product area, influencing cross-team priorities based on your research findings and insights. Your ability to translate user needs into actionable design direction will be critical.
• • Bringing design thinking to roadmap discussions is expected. You will help the team make informed trade-off decisions, ensuring that user experience remains a central consideration in product planning.
• • Leadership and mentorship are key components of this Lead role. You will build consensus around design decisions across multiple teams and stakeholders, particularly in ambiguous or high-stakes situations. Your ability to navigate complex discussions and foster agreement will be vital.
• • You will lead design critiques, providing high-quality, actionable feedback to other designers and elevating the overall craft and quality of the team's output.
• • Mentoring and coaching senior designers will be a significant responsibility. You will help them grow their skills, navigate complex challenges, and develop their careers within the organization.
• • Communicating the design vision and rationale persuasively to leadership is crucial. You will facilitate productive conversations that build design credibility and ensure that design is a valued partner in strategic decision-making.
• • Close partnership with Engineering is required to ensure technical feasibility and effective implementation strategies. You will also identify design opportunities that can drive significant business value.
• • The role requires comfort operating in evolving or undefined problem spaces, bringing structure and clarity without waiting for explicit direction. You will be a proactive problem-solver, capable of defining paths forward in ambiguity.
• • Experience designing AI feature sets and integrating AI-powered capabilities into product experiences is a significant advantage, reflecting the evolving landscape of frontline technology.
• • Finally, you will contribute to a positive and collaborative team environment, working with kind, dedicated colleagues who are passionate about making a real impact.