Title: Senior User Experience Architect

Reports to: Matthew Deming | Sr. Manager, User Experience

Location(s): Chicago or Buffalo Grove

Company Overview

In the past seven years, Zoro has grown from a group of 6 people working out of a 2,000 square foot building, offering fewer than 100,000 products to a group of 250+ working out of a 60,000+ square foot building, offering more than 2,000,000 unique products. We are looking for passionate, driven people who want to join a high-energy, uber growth organization.

Position Description

Zoro is expanding its team of smart, passionate, and tremendously creative User Experience specialists. We are seeking an accomplished Sr. UX Architect to join the team and help us define, build, and optimize experiences for Zoro’s ecommerce website, internal applications, and associated services. The ideal candidate is a well-rounded UX practitioner with experience:

• Discovering unmet customer needs;
• Exploring and evaluating possible product design solutions to address these needs;
• Testing these solutions for viability through a range of qualitative and quantitative methods;
• Working closely with development teams to bring these solutions into the browser;
• Measuring their performance in the marketplace; and
• Ultimately optimizing them for success.

The Sr. User Experience Architect will be embedded within a cross-functional product team that is focused on either improvements to a specific experience on Zoro.com (e.g., Search, My Account) or to an internal application (e.g., CMS, Design System).

This position reports directly to the Sr. Manager of User Experience and has no direct reports. This position can be based in Chicago or Buffalo Grove, IL.

Responsibilities

The Sr. User Experience Architect:

• Works with the Product Owner and Engineering leads to prioritize features and product enhancements that meet customer needs, deliver value to the business, and are technical feasible.
• Contributes to early stage discovery and product definition by developing a deep understanding and definition of users, framing the problem, evaluating current state experiences and areas of competitive disadvantage, designing concepts and models, etc.
• Plans and conducts user research, user testing, and other activities that bring user feedback into the product design process; Regularly shares findings and insights with the Zoro business.
• Translates business requirements and user needs into tangible interaction design through detailed user flows, wireframes, and low-fidelity prototypes.
• Mentors and trains junior UX team members to ensure quality of design delivery within the product team and beyond.
• Works with the Sr. Manager of UX and other design delivery leads to streamline processes, workflows, and templates in support of lean and agile methodologies.
• Stays abreast of innovations in UX best practices, interaction design trends and patterns, and tools / topics of interest to the UX community.
• Contributes thought leadership and evangelizes the value of UX to the broader business through lunch & learns, workshops, and other activities.

Qualifications

• Training in Human-Centered Design, Design Thinking, Human Factors, or related field. A Masters in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Information Systems, or a related UX discipline is preferred.
• 5+ years of work experience in a UX role; prior ecommerce experience is preferred.
• Demonstrated understanding of design, usability, and research best practices and standards.
• Familiarity with web accessibility guidelines and standards (e.g., WCAG 2.1 AA and ADA Section 508 compliance) is preferred.
• A portfolio of work that demonstrates process / approach and the ability to communicate informed design rationale and value. 
• Familiarity with delivering UX artifacts within an agile or lean framework (e.g., design sprints, dual-track agile); prior experience working with a product team is preferred.
• Knowledge of Atlassian JIRA and Confluence platforms for agile collaboration and workflow management
• Experience with current design and rapid prototyping software, specifically Sketch + Invision and Axure.
• Practical knowledge of Google Analytics and behavioral analytics tools such as Clicktale, SessionCam, or HotJar.
• Experience with qualitative and quantitative user research methods and associated platforms, specifically UserTesting.com, Qualtrics, and Optimal Workshop
• Experience with A/B and multivariate test design and analysis; familiarity with Google Optimize or Optimizely is a plus.

You will be a great fit for the role if:

• You are a compelling storyteller, able to build empathy and convey the mindset of users to the broader organization.
• You have the ability to ask, as well as answer, meaningful and impactful questions.
• You are an excellent listener with keen attention to detail.
• You love collaborating with others; they should also love collaborating with you.
• You are naturally inquisitive and love solving problems.
• You embrace ambiguity.
• You learn from failure.
• You are passionate about building, prototyping, and continually evolving digital products throughout the product lifecycle.
• You can convey concepts through sketches, flows, wireframes, clickable prototypes, etc. – whatever method you determine to be the most efficient and effective to gain alignment and support from your target audience.
• You’re a systems thinker; you can logically visualize complex systems and user interaction flows.
• You have the ability to learn new tools and do self-guided work within a fast-paced environment.

Zoro is an Equal Opportunity Workplace and an Affirmative Action Employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.