Product Designer
Basecamp
Basecamp’s Product team is hiring a Senior Designer. We're looking for candidates who live in a location with at least 4 hours overlap with UTC time. We’ll be accepting applications for this position until February 27.
With Basecamp 4 nearly complete, HEY on the rise, and a number of new product ideas in the wings, there's plenty of opportunity to have a significant impact now, and on the next chapter of the company. This is a job where you can really make your mark.
About the JobAt many companies, product design is split into different roles: UX, UI, front-end development, etc. At Basecamp, it’s all one role. This means our designers are generalists. Along with having great visual taste and sensibilities, you must be able to write your own front-end HTML and CSS (BEM). You'll pair up with a back-end programmer to bring the feature to life.
We believe the best designs come from someone who can see it all through, from ideas to visuals to the finished product. We work from the interface first — starting with design, rather than ending with it — so you'll be involved in the work right from the beginning. Our projects are design-led, so you’ll have a lot of flexibility, freedom, influence and impact right away. We follow the 6-week cycle Shape Up process, invented here.
You'll get to work on heavily-used products that push the industry forward. Further, you'll work on the whole product, not just small parts of the product. You won't be sequestered on a team that only gets to work on to-dos, or messaging, or whatever. Working at Basecamp as a designer means working on everything we design, including internal tools.
As a manager of one, you’ll drive shaped projects, big and small, over six-week cycles. You’ll set direction, take ownership, make calls, and see things through without a lot of oversight. You’ll be able to communicate clearly with your colleagues, work across teams, and lend a helping hand when needed.
You love writing, too. You understand that copywriting is design. The words matter as much as the pixels. Great visuals with weak words are poor designs. You should care about how things are phrased as much as you care about how they look.
Here are some things we’ve worked on recently to give you a sense of what you’ll be doing day-to-day.
- Designed a new, novel Out of Office / Away feature in Basecamp to let your co-workers you're away for an extended period of time.
- Designed a 'Send Later' feature in HEY so people can write now and send some other time.
- Created multi-step onboarding and training flows to help new customers learn how HEY works.
- Designed and launched a whole new way to add external tools like Figma, Dropbox, Github to your Basecamp projects.
- Redesigned the Basecamp Home Screen to make it more personal and relevant for each individual user.
- Extracted reusable CSS components after noticing repeating patterns in our codebase.
- Refreshed Basecamp's general look and feel to prepare for the Basecamp 4 launch.
- Designed a new way to refine search results in HEY.
Basecamp is a fully remote company, and this is a remote job. For this position we’re hiring from anywhere with at least 4 hours of overlap with the UTC time zone during a normal work day. We’re not hiring from locations that require a graveyard shift to make the overlap happen. So this time needs to be daytime work for you.About UsBasecamp has been proudly building opinionated small business software for nearly 23 years. As a privately-held company, we don’t answer to anyone but ourselves and our customers. We design our products to solve real-life problems, and we strongly defend our customers’ attention and privacy along the way.
We use the concepts we defined in Getting Real and Shape Up to stay focused, keep projects on track, and ship good work on time.
Further, working at Basecamp means you won't be mired in meetings, shaking your head at burdensome process, or be asked to put in hero-hours. Your nights and weekends are yours, not ours. All we ask is a reasonable 8-hour day and 40-hour work week, and we'll stay out of your way so you can do the best work of your career. We hope you'll join us.
We respect everyone's right to participate in political expression and activism, but avoid having political debates on our internal communication systems. Basecamp as a company also does not weigh in on politics publicly, outside of topics directly related to our business. You should be at peace with both of these stances.
Benefits & CompensationBasecamp pays in the top 10% of the industry based on San Francisco rates. Same position, same pay, no matter where you live. The salary for this position is $185,488.
Our benefits support a life well-lived away from work. Ample time off and all the resources you need to support you in doing the best work of your career. Our handbook has detailed information about the benefits we offer.
Applicants from outside of the US will be offered a contractor role on comparable terms and equal pay with our domestic employees.
How to ApplyPlease submit an application that speaks directly to this position. Tell us about yourself, about what you can bring to Basecamp, and about Basecamp’s role in your future. Tell us why you're a designer. Be descriptive, but don’t feel the need to write a novel — 800 words or so should be plenty. Last, be sure to show us your work, and work other people have done that you really admire.
We’re accepting applications until Sunday, February 27, 2022, at 11:00PM UTC. There’s no benefit to filing early, so take your time.
What happens after you apply?Once the deadline passes, we expect to take a few weeks to review all applications. You’ll hear from us by March 11, about advancement to the interview stage. Expect 2-3 interviews, all one hour, all remote, with your future colleagues, on your schedule. We’ll talk through your background, your approach to design, and dive into your professional knowledge. No gotchas or surprises.
After the interviews, the final candidates will be given an at-home design challenge. The exercise is representative of the kind of work we do, and it helps us understand how you’d approach new problems from scratch. We invite no more than 5 candidates to this stage, and those candidates should expect to spend about 3 work days completing the project. You’ll be compensated for your time.
We hope to make an offer by the end of March, with a flexible start date as soon as April.
Please note that due to the number of applications we receive for open positions, we’re unable to offer individual feedback during the screening process.
This is a demanding application process and significant, long-term career move to consider. We appreciate you giving us that consideration, and we promise to give you our full attention in return. We look forward to hearing from you!APPLY HERE
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