Lead Product Designer

Spud.ca has an exciting opportunity for a Lead Product Designer!

As the Lead Product Designer, you will be responsible for driving the product design vision, strategy, and execution of customer experience on Spud.ca. You will play a key role in shaping the user experience and ensuring that our products are visually appealing, intuitive, and meet the needs of our users.

As a leader in the product design team, you will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including product managers, engineers, marketing, merchandising, and stakeholders, to deliver exceptional user-centric design solutions. Your expertise in design thinking, user research, and visual design will be instrumental in creating innovative and engaging experiences for our customers.

SPUD.ca is a Western Canadian online grocery delivery business comprised of a passionate team who believe that food touches every aspect of our lives, so we are advocates for sustainable farming practices, sourcing locally, treating animals humanely, and reducing food waste. As a Certified B Corporation since 2013, we are committed to socially responsible business practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and inspire a team of product designers, providing guidance, mentorship, and fostering a culture of collaboration and creativity.
• Define the product experience across all customer touchpoints, partnering closely with product managers, developers, marketing, and other key stakeholders to implement high-quality design solutions.
• In partnership with product management, create lean processes to build collaborative solutions for cross-functional teams in our organization.
• Lead discovery activities, including user research, competitive analysis, user interviews, journey maps, and process flows.
• Set high standards for design quality and ensure consistency across all products and platforms.
• Conduct user research, usability testing, and competitive analysis to gain insights and inform design decisions.
• Define user personas, user flows, and interaction models to create an intuitive and seamless user experience.
• Create wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs to communicate design concepts and interactions effectively.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to understand product requirements, technical constraints, and project timelines.
• Work with stakeholders to gather feedback, align design objectives, and advocate for the user throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Contribute to developing and maintaining a design system that ensures scalability and efficiency in the design process.
• Establish a pattern library and design system to help maintain visual and brand consistency between all products and outlets.
• Champion best practices in design methodologies, tools, and workflows to improve team productivity and design quality.
• Collaborate with the design team to continuously evolve and enhance the design system based on user feedback and industry trends.
• Stay current with design trends, technologies, and industry best practices.
• Conduct research and participate in design communities to identify emerging user behaviours and design opportunities.
• Share insights and knowledge with the team, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvements.
• Additional duties as required.

• Proven experience of 8+ years in product design, with experience in UX and interaction design in eCommerce and mobile design.
• Strong portfolio showcasing a range of successful design projects and demonstrating expertise in user-centred design principles, with some focus on eCommerce, mobile, and SaaS application designs.
• Proficiency in design and prototyping tools, such as Sketch, Figma, and Adobe Creative Suite.
• Solid understanding of user research methodologies and usability principles.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills with the ability to articulate design concepts and rationale to diverse stakeholders.
• Ability to articulate your design thinking via interaction flows, information architecture diagrams, wireframes, mock-ups, and prototypes.
• Experience in leading and managing a team of designers, providing mentorship and fostering a collaborative and inclusive culture.
• Experience with web accessibility design.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to balance user needs, business goals, and technical constraints.
• Experience working with agile scrum teams, lean UX canvas, and working iteratively to deliver customer value.

About You

• Comfortable with ambiguity, change, and thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic, startup-like environment.
• Self-driven with the ability to prioritize and pivot as needed.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to communicate large multi-functional technical and business teams in a distributed environment – verbally and via electronic communications.

SPUD's approach to inclusive hiring

SPUD's family of companies is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer which celebrates the diversity found within our teams. We strongly encourage people from underrepresented communities, including women, Indigenous Peoples, members of the LGBTQ2+ community, people of colour, and people with disabilities, to consider applying. We know from experience that great talent comes in many forms, and we want to meet you at your best! Please let us know if we can provide unique accommodations that will enable your equal participation!

Our Values

Our values are more than just words to us. Our values drive our success and guide our growth:

• Create amazing customer experiences. We are passionate in our commitment to deliver for our customers.
• Lead with sustainability and consider our impact.
• Learn, grow and make time to celebrate wins together.
• We welcome different perspectives. Diversity makes us stronger.
• Prioritize, work smart and deliver results for our stakeholders and each other.
• We are committed to our mission and that requires resilience, persistence and grit to persevere and succeed.