Upwork ($UPWK) is the leading tech solution for companies looking to hire the best talent, maintain flexibility, and get more done. We’re passionate about our mission to create economic opportunities so people have better lives. Every year, more than $2 billion of work is done through Upwork by skilled professionals who want the freedom of working anytime, anywhere. Top companies connecting with extraordinary talent around the globe? Upwork is how.

Upwork is looking for an outstanding user experience and product design leader ready for a challenging leadership role at our pioneering, industry-disrupting company.

This role offers the opportunity to lead Upwork’s UX Design across all platforms, to create an ageless, engaging, seamless, and effective experience. And in doing so, you will help us deliver on our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives, and to fulfill our vision of connecting businesses with great talent to work without limits. 

This isn’t just another Silicon Valley startup job, as we aren’t just another startup company. You need to:

• Love navigating an environment lacking standardization and process, which includes defining just the right amount of process to make the team as productive as possible 
• Develop a point of view on issues and demonstrate incredible judgement in making high impact decisions with minimal oversight
• Embrace diverse cultural norms in order to succeed in a highly leveraged, globally distributed team
• Relish taking risks and failing fast - with the goal of failing more often than succeeding
• Demonstrate an unusual aptitude for learning from mistakes and continuous improvement on a team-wide level
• Excel at stepping into the unknown via developing untested approaches to new problems, vs. applying the tried and true

In doing this successfully, you will:

• Be directly responsible for creating millions of jobs for talented people around the world
• Change the future by disrupting the ways in which people around the world come together to form teams, collaborate, and do great work
• Learn like never before by continuously operating at the edge of your comfort zone
• Leave your own mark in molding the clay of an innovative and inspiring company that is committed to throwing out old models where needed
• Build your network with colleagues who are passion-driven, don’t take themselves too seriously, and do enjoy some of our perks (like work from home Wednesdays and our non-facetime culture)

If you join us as the VP of UX & Design, you’ll focus your energy on:

• Leading our talented team of user experience and visual designers and researchers to achieve their full potential, cultivating their talents and capabilities
• Delivering a streamlined and consistent end-to-end experience for our users in a product that is by nature sophisticated and complex
• Crafting innovative design processes and approaches that work best for our agile, distributed model that includes remote team members worldwide
• Infusing the product strategy and priorities with high impact, data-driven, customer experience-focused initiatives
• Collaborating with partners in product management, marketing, operations and enterprise sales roles to ensure a consistent product experience that reflects our business goals, product values and brand

To operate effectively at this, we expect you have:  

• 15+ years of interaction design experience for a high-traffic web product (two-sided marketplace, e-commerce or B2B web app experience highly desired)
• 10+ years management experience and a passion for bringing the best out of a diverse team of UX and visual designers
• Deep knowledge of user research methodologies and product design best practices, and the ability to effectively implement these practices and apply standards
• Polished communication skills and track record advocating for compelling product design and the underpinning methodologies that deliver great design
• Strong grasp of technology underpinning channels spanning mobile (web, iOS, Android), online, and email experiences, so that you can guide the team to solutions that are both elegant and feasible
• Ability to apply great design principles and practice in a fast-moving, data-driven, collaborative environment that has a bias towards delivery and MVP approaches

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