Senior UX Designer II
Ginkgo Bioworks · Remote (USA)
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
Ginkgo believes that if we are to grow a thriving, sustainable bioeconomy, we must also grow a new market in biosecurity. Our biosecurity and public health initiative, Concentric by Ginkgo, launched a nationwide emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing end-to-end pathogen monitoring services to schools, communities, and travelers. As we continue to scale Concentric, our work is also evolving into new and exciting directions, from global expansion to the integration of new technologies and capabilities, including our Traveler-Based Genomic Surveillance Plan with the CDC.
Role Introduction:
As Director of UX Design for Concentric by Ginkgo, you will enhance and expand our global biosecurity enterprise management platform, which enables public health officials to operate and gain insights from their pathogen monitoring programs to keep nations safe. Your understanding of UX, interaction design, information architecture, and data design will be crucial in identifying high impact workstreams and designs that empower and delight clients while solving pain points for internal users.
We are formalizing and growing the product design function as we transition into the expansion of our products to solve the next phase of pandemic challenges and lay the foundation for sustainable, global biosecurity. You will lead a team of 2-3 product designers and will collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, engineers, and data analysts to dive into problems and align on solutions. Your leadership skills and management experience will not only grow the skills of your team but also elevate visibility of this key function in the organization. You will report into Product Management.
Responsibilities
- Lead UX activities: user research, information architecture, conceptual design, prototyping, detailed graphic design, usability testing, and implementation
- Mentor, collaborate, and contribute within multi-disciplinary teams (product managers, engineers, data analysts) to define problems, user needs and product/feature definitions
- Continuously study end user behavior and attitudes, directly or through proxies, to offer strategic insights and create innovative solutions.
- Create and iterate on UX design concepts, wireframes, and interactive prototypes.
- Run internal cross functional design reviews to collect stakeholder feedback and ensure alignment
- Test prototypes with external users and collect feedback to identify usability and design improvements pre and post launch
- Update and maintain the design system as the platform evolves
- Lead and mentor a 2-3 person Product Design team
- Own and iterate on the team’s processes and strategies to empower their success in a fast-paced environment and ensure working alignment with PM and Engineering teams.
- Establish and measure UX metrics to ensure a quality product experience for customers and to evangelize the business value of design
- Maintain excellence in design work by critiquing, advising, and challenging designers and project teams
- Maintain strong partnerships and relationships with stakeholders and developers throughout the entire design process
Minimum Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree with minimum 6 years of experience, or Master’s with 4 years in professional design
- 2 years leading teams and/ or managing designers
- Trained in agile methodologies and experience acting as an evangelist for iterative, fast-paced, and lean product development practices
- Advocate for and practitioner of Human Centered Design, Design Thinking methodologies and Universal Design principles
- Mastery of hands-on design skills in Figma and other necessary design tools: from early wireframes to final deliverables with comprehensive specifications
- Deep knowledge of UX/UI design foundations: responsive design, accessibility, UI components, etc.
- High confidence in the ability to communicate and present inspiring stories about project outcomes, strategic decisions, and design vision to designers, project teams, and company leadership
- Experience defining, measuring, and communicating impact of design driven solutions and products
- A portfolio that demonstrates your work on commercialized products
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, launch early to learn quickly environment
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Experience designing for enterprise software, public health departments, and/or the intelligence community.
- Expertise in up-to-date UX/UI design best practices and trends in user research methodologies.
- Advanced understanding of service design methodologies
- Experience creating data visualizations for technical applications
- Past experience with or a strong curiosity about biology and/or life sciences
- Masters Degree in design from an accredited design school in Interaction, UX/UI, Service design, Design Research, Design Strategy, or similar
Total compensation for this role is market driven, with a starting salary of $120k+, as well as company stock awards. Base pay is ultimately determined based on a candidate's skills, expertise, and experience. We also offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental & vision coverage, health spending accounts, voluntary benefits, leave of absence policies, Employee Assistance Program, 401(k) program with employer contribution, 8 paid holidays in addition to a full-week winter shutdown and unlimited Paid Time Off policy.
- What is it really like to take your company public via a SPAC? One Boston biotech shares its journey (Fortune)
- Ginkgo Bioworks resizes the definition of going big in biotech, raising $2.5B in a record SPAC deal that weighs in with a whopping $15B-plus valuation (Endpoints News)
- Ginkgo Bioworks CEO on scaling up Covid-19 testing: ‘If we try, we can win’ (CNBC)
- Ginkgo raises $70 million to ramp up COVID-19 testing for employers, universities (Boston Globe)
- Ginkgo Bioworks Redirects Its Biotech Platform to Coronavirus (Wall Street Journal)
- Ginkgo Bioworks Provides Support on Process Optimization to Moderna for COVID-19 Response (PRNewswire)
- The Life Factory: Synthetic Organisms From This $1.4 Billion Startup Will Revolutionize Manufacturing (Forbes)
- Synthetic Bio Pioneer Ginkgo Raises $290 Million in New Funding (Bloomberg)
- Ginkgo Bioworks raises $350 million fund for biotech spinouts (Reuters)
- Can This Company Convince You to Love GMOs? (The Atlantic)