Senior Product Designer

Vertex is seeking a collaborative Senior Product Designer to lead the end-to-end design of products and services. This role involves intake, planning, problem framing, user research, ideation, usability testing, and implementation support. The designer will articulate design decisions, influence shared understanding, and facilitate solutions for inclusive, usable, and delightful customer experiences. Key responsibilities include understanding customer needs, collaborating with stakeholders, and applying Lean UX principles to deliver optimal enterprise solutions.

Must Have

• Facilitate end-to-end design of products and services, including intake, planning, problem framing, user research, ideation, usability testing, and implementation support.
• Teach and articulate design decisions across business and technology functions.
• Possess emotional intelligence to recognize misalignment and influence shared understanding.
• Be an excellent communicator and facilitator.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to facilitate solutions that provide inclusive, usable, and delightful experiences for customers.
• Become deeply familiar with Vertex’s mission, vision, practices, market, customers, services, and systems.
• Build trust through proactive communication, collaboration, demonstrating data driven decisions, and recommending quality user experience design solutions.
• Socialize a deep and shared understanding within Vertex of customers and their problems, unmet needs, behavior within products and services, and key frustrations.
• Meet with key stakeholders in product management and engineering to identify, plan, and prioritize design needs and opportunities.
• Use right-sized research and design methodologies and tools to facilitate workshops with the team.
• Discover new value for enterprise experiences.
• Apply the Lean UX principles.
• Demonstrate professional contribution to enterprise-level web-based services.
• Communicate about your work, shown through a portfolio.
• Possess advanced time management skills.
• Shape and facilitate internal design ceremonies (e.g. critiques, planning, retrospectives).
• Shape and facilitate a wide variety of collaborative and group activities (e.g. ideation sessions, design sprints, affinity mapping, user story mapping, discovery kickoff sessions, executive presentations).
• Influence and work with a broad range of people and processes to extract and document a coherent, systemic overview of an experience.
• Demonstrate flexibility in adapting ways of working as necessary.
• Be confident managing difficult conversations and task conflict.
• Be capable of articulating the relationship between design decisions and HCI principles, accessibility requirements, best practices, and heuristics.
• Demonstrate strong active listening skills.
• Ability to simplify complex information and tailor communication based on audience.
• Possess strong organizational skills and demonstrate proactivity.
• Be results oriented, customer focused, and exhibit good interpersonal skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft office packages.
• Possess strong asynchronous communication skills.
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience.
• Five or more years of experience in enterprise-level product design.
• Experience with user research, information architecture, interaction design, user interface design, visual design, usability testing.
• Experience with common design tools or platforms.
• Understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle.
• Experience with Agile Scrum and Kanban teams.

Good to Have

• Figma experience preferred.
• Learn continuously through self-study, engagement with the design community, and professional development opportunities.
• Invest in the professional development of peers by coaching and mentoring.
• Influence the vision and operational excellence of design through engagement.

Perks & Benefits

• Company-expensed professional development opportunities (e.g. books, workshops, conferences, certifications)

We’re looking for a collaborative Senior Product Designer with experience facilitating the end-to-end design of products and services, including intake, planning, problem framing, user research, ideation, usability testing, and implementation support. This position requires the ability to teach and articulate design decisions across business and technology functions, and the emotional intelligence necessary to recognize misalignment and influence shared understanding. Our ideal candidate is an excellent communicator and facilitator who is ready to collaborate cross-functionally, and facilitate solutions that provide inclusive, usable, and delightful experiences for our customers.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Become deeply familiar with Vertex’s mission, vision, practices, market, customers, services, and systems.
• Build trust through proactive communication, collaboration, demonstrating data driven decisions, and recommending quality user experience design solutions.
• Socialize a deep and shared understanding within Vertex of our customers and their problems, their unmet needs, their behavior within our products and services, and the key frustrations they encounter.
• Meet with key stakeholders in product management and engineering to identify, plan, and prioritize the design needs and opportunities, articulating the key customer problems or needs and the desired business and customer outcomes of each project.
• Use the right-sized research and design methodologies and tools of your choice, facilitate workshops with the team to frame problems, gather requirements, generate shared understanding, work through tradeoffs, produce generative design ideas, and deliver optimal solutions.
• Discover new value for our enterprise experiences.
• Learn continuously through self-study, engagement with the design community, and company- expensed professional development opportunities (e.g. books, workshops, conferences, certifications, etc.).
• Invest in the professional development of your peers by coaching and mentoring through regular catch-ups and training sessions, proactively seeking to improve team morale, motivation, and inspire the best in others.
• Influence the vision and operational excellence of design through engagement.
• Travel occasionally when required

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• N/A

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• Advanced ability to apply the Lean UX principles of collaborative design over designing on an island, solving user problems over designing the next cool feature, applying appropriate tools over following a rigid plan, and nimble design over heavy comps or specifications.
• Advanced ability to demonstrate professional contribution to enterprise-level web-based services.
• Advanced ability to communicate about your work, shown through a portfolio, which will be requested and reviewed during the interview process.
• Advanced time management skills.
• Advanced ability to shape and facilitate internal design ceremonies (e.g. critiques, planning, retrospectives, etc.).
• Advanced ability to shape and facilitate a wide variety of collaborative and group activities (e.g. ideation sessions, design sprints, affinity mapping, user story mapping, discovery kickoff sessions, executive presentations, etc.).
• Advanced ability to influence and work with a broad range of people and processes to extract and document a coherent, systemic overview of an experience, either as it exists or as it is to be designed.
• Advanced ability to demonstrate flexibility in adapting your ways of working as necessary in order to achieve desired outcomes.
• Confident managing difficult conversations and task conflict.
• Capable of articulating the relationship between design decisions and HCI principles, accessibility requirements, best practices, and heuristics.
• Demonstrate strong active listening skills.
• Ability to simplify complex information and tailor communication based on audience.
• Must possess strong organizational skills and demonstrate proactivity.
• Must be results oriented, customer focused, and exhibit good interpersonal skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft office packages.
• Strong asynchronous communication skills.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING:

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience.
• Five (5) or more years of experience in enterprise-level product design.
• Experience with the following design competencies: user research, information architecture, interaction design, user interface design, visual design, usability testing, etc.
• Experience with common design tools or platforms. Figma preferred.
• Understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle.
• Experience with Agile Scrum and Kanban teams.

Other Qualifications

The Winning Way behaviors that all Vertex employees need in order to meet the expectations of each other, our customers, and our partners.

• Communicate with Clarity - Be clear, concise and actionable. Be relentlessly constructive. Seek and provide meaningful feedback.
• Act with Urgency - Adopt an agile mentality - frequent iterations, improved speed, resilience. 80/20 rule – better is the enemy of done. Don’t spend hours when minutes are enough.
• Work with Purpose - Exhibit a “We Can” mindset. Results outweigh effort. Everyone understands how their role contributes. Set aside personal objectives for team results.
• Drive to Decision - Cut the swirl with defined deadlines and decision points. Be clear on individual accountability and decision authority. Guided by a commitment to and accountability for customer outcomes.
• Own the Outcome - Defined milestones, commitments and intended results. Assess your work in context, if you’re unsure, ask. Demonstrate unwavering support for decisions.

COMMENTS:

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by individuals in this position. Other functions may be assigned, and management retains the right to add or change the duties at any time.