Group Design Manager

Intercom was founded in 2011 to change the standard of customer service online. Our AI-first customer service platform is a totally new way to deliver customer service and is designed to transform the way businesses interact with their customers through AI. We all know that customer service on the internet sucks. It’s slow and impersonal. We help businesses provide instant and exceptional service to their customers and maximize their support agents’ productivity, efficiency, and performance—all through our single AI system. More than 25,000 businesses use Intercom to send millions of messages to millions of customers each month.Intercom has been a long-standing product leader and cultural icon in the technology and startup worlds for more than a decade. We set the pace for our industry and live by our values that allow us to push boundaries, build with speed and intensity, and deliver incredible value to our customers.Join us on our mission to redefine customer service and make internet business personal.

What's the opportunity?

We’re looking for an experienced Senior Design Manager to grow our people and products. Design Managers at Intercom directly support product Designers in delivering the best work they can while also working on high-level strategic design projects themselves. The opportunity to have impact at both of these levels is massive: you’d be joining a small Design Leadership Team, so you’ll have very real ownership and potential to define the role and make your mark. At the same time, we’re not just starting out - there’s a stable and mature environment and an existing base on which you can build. All together, you’ll have the opportunity to do the best work of your career.

We've had Designers in key leadership roles, including at the exec level, from the very beginning. This has made Design a core foundation of our company's DNA, and you'll never have to justify the importance of Design. We genuinely care about people and value kindness in our everyday interactions. You'll be able to be yourself, feel valued, supported, learn and grow no matter how experienced you are.

If you want to learn more about what it's like to work here, check out intercom.design, read what makes us different, and listen to a podcast with our Chief Product Officer, Paul Adams. If you’re passionate about helping Product Designers to grow and learn while shipping high-quality product that solves real problems for customers, we'd love to hear from you! By the way, imposter syndrome is a real thing, don't let it stop you and please apply!

We currently operate in a hybrid working model and have offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Dublin, London and Sydney.

What will I be doing?

• Managing and supporting Product Designers and Senior Product Designers across multiple products
• Coaching and providing feedback on your team’s performance, helping them to develop clear career development goals and action plans on how to achieve them
• Partner with the Group Product Manager and Group Engineering Manager for the group you lead, collectively ensuring that the group is strategically aligned, engaged, and delivering results.
• Helping to shape the future vision of products and driving strategic design work in exciting areas, such as conversational design, messengers, machine learning and more
• Partnering directly with our Directors and VPs of Product Design in Dublin and London to evolve the Product Design team: our people, our structure, our processes, our beliefs
• Collaborating with leaders across the company: other design leaders, Research, Data Analytics, Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and more
• Growing Intercom Design by recruiting and representing us publicly in ways like writing forour blog, speaking, community building and outreach, and more

What skills do I need?

• Experience managing Product Designers and genuinely caring about how the people who report to you perform, feel, and grow. The ability to develop a genuine relationship with people and help them grow, learn, and succeed.
• Experience designing digital products and systems. This isn’t solely a people management role - you’ll also be involved with and guide the product work. All of our managers care deeply about and actively engage in our product development process, details, and outcomes.
• A working knowledge of the full stack of Product Design, from systems thinking to visual design. You don’t need to be a specialist in all of these things, but you should be able to have informed, intelligent conversations.
• Ability to communicate with precision, clarity, honesty, and respect.
• Ability to envision and lead change. There are many things that we still need to evolve and improve about how we work, and design managers are a key part in driving that change. We’re looking for someone who aligns with our values, but also who makes us better.
• A growth mindset. Willingness to own problems. Comfort with ambiguity. Passion for building product. A desire to make things better.

Bonus skills & attributes

We'd also love to see your portfolio of design work. It should touch on the problems you solved (ideally focused on designing software products) and the process you applied to tackling the challenges, rather than focusing just on visual polish, or the final deliverables.

Benefits

We are a well-treated bunch, with awesome benefits! If there’s something important to you that’s not on this list, talk to us!

• Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing start-up
• We serve lunch every weekday, plus a variety of snack foods and a fully stocked kitchen
• Regular compensation reviews - we reward great work!
• Pension scheme & match up to 4%
• Peace of mind with life assurance, as well as comprehensive health and dental insurance for you and your dependents
• Flexible paid time off policy
• Paid maternity leave, as well as 6 weeks paternity leave for fathers, to let you spend valuable time with your loved ones
• If you’re cycling, we’ve got you covered on the Cycle-to-Work Scheme. With secure bike storage too
• MacBooks are our standard, but we’re happy to get you whatever equipment helps you get your job done

Policies

Intercom has a hybrid working policy. We believe that working in person helps us stay connected, collaborate easier and create a great culture while still providing flexibility to work from home. We expect employees to be in the office at least two days per week.

We have a radically open and accepting culture at Intercom. We avoid spending time on divisive subjects to foster a safe and cohesive work environment for everyone. As an organization, our policy is to not advocate on behalf of the company or our employees on any social or political topics out of our internal or external communications. We respect personal opinion and expression on these topics on personal social platforms on personal time, and do not challenge or confront anyone for their views on non-work related topics. Our goal is to focus on doing incredible work to achieve our goals and unite the company through our core values.

Intercom values diversity and is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity. Intercom will not discriminate against an applicant or employee on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, age, physical or mental disability, veteran or military status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law.

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