Director, User Experience

WHO WE ARE:

ActBlue is a nonprofit that builds tech and infrastructure for Democratic campaigns, progressive-aligned causes, and people trying to make an impact in order to fuel long-term, people-powered change. If you’ve ever given online to a Democrat or progressive organization, chances are you’ve used our powerful online fundraising platform.

We put power in the hands of small-dollar donors and help thousands of groups — from presidential candidates to environmental organizations — build grassroots movements. We envision a democracy where everyone looking to make progressive people-powered change can easily and effectively deploy their resources, energy, and creativity to shape our country and futures. Each and every one of us, from the political activists to the tech innovators to the customer service pros, is fully committed to our mission.

THE OPPORTUNITY:

The Director of User Experience is responsible for leading ActBlue’s diverse and talented team of UX designers and researchers. This team works to uncover user needs, advocate for the user experience, and partners with software engineers, product managers, data scientists, and marketing teams to deliver best-in-class product experiences. These experiences give Democrats and progressives an advantage in political and nonprofit fundraising, and allowall our donors to give with ease and confidence. This role reports directly to the Vice President of Product.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

• Lead user experience holistically across the ActBlue software product, including the design process, design system, and experience strategy, as well as the UX research activities that inform these.
• Thoughtfully scale your department with the right structures, roles, and responsibilities, and confidently lead through a time of change and ambiguity to build a strong user experience team and community of practice in a fully remote/distributed environment.
• Ensure your team of designers and researchers have what they need to thrive, grow, and deliver great work. This includes defining design processes; providing direction, mentorship and development opportunities for both junior and senior team members; constructively resolving conflict; and fostering a collaborative and inclusive work culture.
• Lead meetings, workshops, presentations, and other activities that drive innovation, socialize research insights, inform and influence executive leadership, and build cross-functional alignment across the organization.
• Represent the user experience side of the product leadership triad of product management, user experience, and engineering, and collaborate with peers in leadership as a key strategic partner for important product decisions; align roadmap, UX and product development activities in an agile environment; and champion prioritization of high-impact product development efforts grounded in user research and a strong understanding of organizational and movement-wide context and goals.
• Partner effectively with creative and research peers in marketing to ensure a consistent and cohesive brand experience across all of ActBlue’s touchpoints and to build a coherent 360 degree view of all of ActBlue’s users.
• Manage team budget and participate in quarterly and annual planning activities.
  
  

WHAT YOU BRING:

• You have 8+ years of hands-on and 5+ years of people leadership experience in product design and research roles, with a proven ability to influence at the executive level and drive design and research activities throughout the product lifecycle.
• You have experience building and leading both small and scrappy teams and working in mature UX organizations, and know how to manage through the inflection points and pitfalls that come with growth and managing through change.
• You are a manager who invests in your people, and you take pride in your ability to leverage your team’s strengths, recruit great talent, develop individual team members, and build diverse, cohesive, collaborative, and empowered teams, enabling them to do the best work of their careers.
• You are a strategic systems thinker with a pragmatic and adaptable approach to design and research. You apply best practices, but are always on the lookout for new approaches to try; you know when to run a quick and dirty experiment and when to plan for scale, and you know when to push to look at more data and when to just make a judgment call.
• You’re a compelling presenter with strong listening, persuasion, and facilitation skills, whether you’re interviewing users, hashing through technical tradeoffs, or presenting at an org-wide all hands. You know when to adjust your focus, vocabulary, and level of detail according to the audience and the goal of the conversation.
• You are dedicated to removing ambiguity and adding clarity in every interaction, and you continually focus your team’s priorities on the strategic context and the customer problems we’re trying to solve.
• You’re outcome-oriented, build respect and strong relationships, and see conflict as something to be explored and resolved rather than avoided. You’re comfortable delivering and accepting bad news, pushing outside your comfort zone, and having hard conversations to get to a better outcome.
• You thrive in an environment with passionate, engaged, and sometimes very opinionated teammates. You’re dedicated to fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment, and don’t just welcome, but center and amplify, backgrounds and points of view that differ from yours.
• You have a solid understanding of the tools of the trade and technologies used, but you aren’t afraid to dive in to expand your understanding, whether it’s technical architecture, obscure campaign finance regulations, or political jargon – and you’re comfortable asking questions to fill in gaps in your knowledge.
• You care about progressive causes and politics and want to spend your time making a meaningful impact by doing what you do best.
  
  

BONUS POINTS IF…

• You have experience working in the political or nonprofit space, or on a product that serves these markets.
• You have experience working on the user experience of a two-sided marketplace (e.g. ecommerce, fintech products).
• You’ve worked both in a small and scrappy startup environment and in a scaled, mature UX organization.
• You have hands-on experience with or previously led organizations that included design ops, design systems, beta testing, customer insights, and/or UX writing, content design, or editorial roles.
  
  

WHAT WE WORK WITH:

• Design stack: Figma, Adobe Suite, Miro
• Tech stack: Storybook, Styled Components, React, and other modern front-end technologies
  
  

LOCATION AND COMPENSATION:

This posting is for a full-time, remote, salaried position. Travel may be required on a limited basis to attend all-staff and departmental retreats (1-2 times per year). Additional occasional travel may be required for research purposes. ATS is currently authorized to support remote work employees in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin.

Salary Range Details:

Salary Range: $213,918 - $242,511

ActBlue is committed to consistent compensation practices across our organization. Final salary offers will take into account factors such as candidate experience, interview performance and current team salary parity.

BENEFITS:

• Flexible work schedules and an unlimited time-off policy
• Fully paid and trans-inclusive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families; plus fully-paid health reimbursement arrangement to use for out of pocket expenses and fully-paid short- and long-term disability
• Fully paid basic and AD&D life insurance and a voluntary supplemental life insurance option
• Dependent and health care flexible spending account options
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) benefits for employees
• Automatic 2% Employer-paid 401K contribution, plus up to an additional 6% match on employee contributions
• A minimum of three months paid medical, family and parental leave (for all new parents, adoptions included)
• Commuter or home-office benefits, including a $1,000 home-office setup allowance for all new full-time remote employees
• Additional perks including quarterly snack deliveries and digital subscriptions to the Boston Globe & New York Times
  
  

ActBlue is unable to sponsor work visas at this time.

Supervisory role not part of the Bargaining Unit position: Certain employees who report to this position may be covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

INCLUSION STATEMENT:

ActBlue is deeply committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity. We commit to retaining, developing, recruiting, and hiring a diverse staff community. We honor the dignity of all. We celebrate their unique qualities. And we recognize the wide range of human differences, backgrounds, and intersectional identities that enrich the workspace and help us better meet our mission. If you feel a connection to our mission and see your interests reflected in this job description we encourage you to apply - even if you don’t meet every requirement.

ActBlue is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities throughout the interview and employment process, including using our online system to apply for a position. If you would like to request an accommodation, please contact us at to get started.

• ActBlue will never ask candidates to buy equipment, nor will we email from anything other than an actblue.com or actbluetech.com email address.

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