iamota is a leading Shopify Plus Design and Development Agency Partner.
As Director of Design at iamota, you will be accountable for shaping and tuning our design function and team so that our outputs are prolific, remarkable and effective. This includes leading and managing the designers and collaborating in an ego-less manner with strategists, developers, project managers and clients.
Primary Goal:
Drive and lead the iamota design team, our design opps, our approach and our outputs by working collaboratively across the design team, the broader iamota project team, the management team, and our current and prospective clients.
Day-to-Day Responsibilities / Areas of Focus:
Solve
- Work closely with the strategy group to help identify various project challenges and opportunities so that design is focussed on solving the right areas.
- Ensure our design ops including team, tools, processes and approach is highly functioning across a range of clients seeking ecommerce Shopify Plus design solutions.
- Mentor the team (and help the client) find and realize the design sweet spot where brand and business intersect opportunity and feasibility for the project.
- Understand possibilities—as well as constraints—in solving complex design challenges for enterprise businesses and clients on Shopify Plus.
- Lean into experience gained from previous work re: a variety of categories, business models, competitors, target audience, products, services, value proposition, and more to apply to upcoming projects.
- Leverage data and insights to diagnose and articulate the true project design “challenge(s)” and solutions.
- Ability to nurture, grow and bring out the best in each of our designers. To challenge and ultimately to grow their design thinking and skills and evolve their human skills too.
- Lean into ecommerce and design challenges armed with deep knowledge of ecommerce best practices as part of the solutioning process.
- Naturally gravitate to human centred, mobile first, design component systems thinking and solutioning.
- Ability to roll up your sleeves and get into the work first hand and/or direct and support other designers on multiple projects, tight deadlines and solution to constraints (platform, requirements, budget, etc.)
Design Overall
- Build and grow a team and evolve our design operations so that we efficiently deliver impactful ecommerce (Shopify Plus) experiences for our clients and their customers.
- Stay up-to-date on trends, research, best practices from both a design team and an ecommerce POV.
- Drive innovation and enhancements to our design processes and team - so that we grow and produce outstanding work.
- Be an influential voice on the management team, representing design, the design team and our design work overall.
Design UX
- Coach our designers, broader team and clients on and through the recommended UX approach to be employed based on the specific project design challenges.
- Ability to clearly define supporting UX tasks/assignments so that team members know what they need to solve for and the resulting deliverables.
- Ability to oversee and support the design team and/or to produce high quality low-high fidelity UX design deliverables such as user flows/task flows, user journeys, site maps, page flows, paths to purchase, site maps, annotated wireframes, components and more as and when required.
- Comfortable working with known content or helping the client shape their content.
- Experiment with different interaction patterns, from predefined components to out-of-the box concepts and new ones.
- Actively lead the consultation and collaboration process with development to ensure that: designs and components are achievable; they meet end user needs; and they are within the defined scope parameters.
- Comfortable leading and coaching the team to employ the appropriate UX research methodologies when the need arises.
- Pro-actively consider accessibility requirements in UX, and of course UI design, so that design outputs are WCAG2.0 compliant.
Design UI
- Envision and articulate to our team and the client - how the client’s brand (which may or may not have strong brand guidelines) comes to life (with supporting assets) on the new ecommerce site.
- When needed, drive the definition and provide clear direction for assets to be produced to support the UI vision.
- Support the team and/or deliver UI/visual design related outputs including visuals, moodboards, mockups, and design systems.
- Articulate and explore motion design language to create brand appropriate animation and fluidity to our end experiences.
- Oversee and ensure we’re utilizing Figma and/or other prototyping tools so that both the client, Project Managers and developers understand proposed design work.
Communicate
- Grow a strong design based culture and make-it-happen team environment.
- Lead and Support the design team to help them be an influential voice in design discussions as they gather design inputs, recommend approaches, explore solutions, explain and collaborate on designs with the direct team, other designers, developers, strategists, the PM and the client.
- Strong EQ that is well tuned to designers and their needs along with other roles on the team (PM, Strategy, Development) and various client stakeholders which may include design and create folks.
- Mature in receiving and providing feedback on design work and also on designer performance (informally and more formally).
- Ability to clearly articulate and help other design team members define the UX & UI design challenge, considerations, design related decisions and unveil the ‘why’ behind the thinking, explorations and work – be it to the internal team or the client.
- Communicate effectively as needed to a variety of potential audiences: from the more senior to more junior; from prospective clients to clients; from and to a variety of team roles project manager, designers, tech leads, stategists and developers.
- Bring positive energy and vibe to an open, collaborative, and inclusive remote work environment.
Time and Task Management with Attention to Details
- Thorough, detail-oriented, and highly organized with people, designs, and files.
- Work with PMs to define and allocate the design assignments, the tasks, timing and time allocations.
- Monitor forecast which outlines deliverables and related time for tasks and assignments, promptly advising if you are ahead or behind in deliverables.
- Accurately and timely completion of timesheets with appropriate details.
Our Tech stack
Google Drive; Zoom; Slack; Notion; Asana; Harvest Time Tracking & Harvest Forecast Resourcing; Figma; Miro
Who we’re looking for
EXPERIENCE/EDUCATION
- Full stack design background from UX right down to UI
- 7 plus years design experience, including some design management role
- Direct design reports - you're more than a design project lead
- Experience managing and developing designers
- Strong presentation of design approaches, design thinking and design work
- Strong portfolio of work featuring well known consumer brands
BONUS POINTS (NOT ESSENTIAL)
- Shopify or ecommerce based experience
- Agency experience
- Visual Design Education related Degree
PERKS & BENEFITS
- Competitive health benefits plan.
- Remote work environment.
- Remote work allowance.
- Professional development allowance.
- Career and personal growth planning through our OKR framework.
- Bi-annual goal setting and bi-weekly 1:1s.
- Minimum 3 weeks vacation.
- Additional bonus company-wide holidays.
- Reduced Summer hours schedule.
