VP, Design

For the past decade, we’ve been helping thousands of companies worldwide safely hand the Deploy button to others on the team. We’re now building on this foundation and have big plans on how we can help organizations as a whole, not just the best teams.

Our product teams actively collaborate to make our products exceptional. We’re looking for someone to lead the design function, nurture our design talent, and build the future of interaction design, research, and product education.

We’re a scale-up company, so in this role, you can expect your day-to-day to include the following:

• Be obsessed with how we design a technical product experience that spans the web, command line, desired state code, scripts, APIs, and chat interfaces.

• Think deeply about the design of human factors for individuals with transactional needs through team and organization-scale operations.

• Shape the design practice with your design managers, enabling everyone to make career-defining contributions.

• Explore opportunities with product group leaders, ensuring the design aspect is framed well so that designers have a good starting point.

• Get involved in customer conversations and research to ensure we understand their problems and that those problems are reflected in the opportunities being considered by the product groups and teams.

• Monitor the overall impact of our product experience, setting the bar in what good looks like and spotting emerging trends and issues.

• Partner with product and engineering leadership on R&D initiatives and structure.

Product designers are embedded in product groups and teams across the Australia + New Zealand and Israel + Ukraine development regions. Among them are recently introduced specialist roles such as product researcher and content designer to help us achieve a greater depth of execution.

You will be part of the R&D leadership team alongside product and engineering leadership - Colin Bowern and Michael Noonan. You will have a relationship with Paul Stovell, our founder and CEO, who is passionate about creating the best product experiences. You will work with Revenue and Marketing leaders to understand how customers land and expand. You’ll partner with People & Culture and Finance organizations to accelerate R&D and the design function.

To be considered for this role, you’ll need:

• A highly collaborative approach;

• Be familiar with working with software development teams and B2B products;

• Be comfortable talking to customers and cross-functional stakeholders;

• Be comfortable working on ambiguous problems;

• Have the ability to see the problem to be solved without immediately jumping to a solution and to share context with the team so that all possible approaches can be surfaced;

• Be pragmatic, with an understanding and appreciation for working in an ever-changing environment;

• Have exceptional organizational and analytical skills, along with attention to detail;

• Have excellent written and verbal communication skills

Bonus points for:

• Design experience working on technical products with multiple interface types

• Worked in both a product-led and sales-led B2B product company

• Experience in a software engineering role or team

Compensation:

Octopus has an internally open and transparent system for compensation. Any Octonaut can view the compensation for any role at any level. This ensures people doing the same work with the same skill get paid the same.

We'll discuss your compensation requirements in the initial chat.

Benefits include a minimum of 25 days annual leave, up to 10 days of paid sick and carers leave, 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave with flexible return options, and stock options. Learn more.

Below is the interview process you can expect for this role. We know interviewing can seem daunting, but rest assured we designed our interview process to move quickly while still getting you all the information you need.

👋Initial chat

[30 min] Meet a Talent Acquisition team member where you'll learn more about life at Octopus and the role.

☕ Hiring manager interview

[30 Min] Meet our SVP, Product to explore the shape of the role and the problems we're hoping to solve together.

🧑‍💻Team interview

[60-90 min] Assemble and present a case study to a panel from the Design, Product, and Engineering groups.

🤝 Stakeholder interviews

[30 min] We'll organise a few informal meet-and-greet style calls with stakeholders, including direct reports and peers.

Our public employee handbook is the best place to learn more about life at Octopus. It includes our values, how we structure teams, career progression, leave and benefits, and much more. 

If you're enthusiastic about this position, even if you don’t meet all the criteria above, we wholeheartedly encourage you to submit your application. Our talent team is in-house, and we recognize that every individual brings something unique. We take the time to review every application and consider how you might add to the team. 

We know your time is precious. If you apply, we promise to update you at least once per week about the status of your application and to give you clear expectations for each step in the journey.

[Note to Search Firms/Agencies]

Octopus Deploy does not compensate search firms for unsolicited assistance unless they have a written search agreement with Octopus Deploy and the requisition is position-specific. Any resumes, curriculum vitae and other unsolicited assistance from search firms that do not have a written search agreement or position-specific requisition submitted to any Associate of Octopus Deploy will be deemed the sole property of Octopus Deploy and no fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Octopus Deploy.