Remote, Any

Humbly Confident Product Designer


About Us and Why We’re Hiring

We build “You Need a Budget,” the best budgeting software around. (But people in the know call us YNAB, which is pronounced “why-nab.”) For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. Google us, or read some of our reviews on the app store, and you’ll see what we mean. We love building something that has a huge positive impact on people’s lives.

We’re a software ecosystem that includes personal budgeting apps for web, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Android phones. Our mission is to make sure the whole world knows that a budget is the best life and financial planning tool ever invented—and help make it simple and joyful to use one.

If you’re the product designer we’re looking for, you have experience designing great interfaces and experiences for most of the platforms listed above. More importantly, you’re a designer who views your job as that of a problem solver. You have a knack for interaction design and love logical UI patterns, but you also foster a deep empathy for people. We design our software to fit our customers more than our fancy, and you enjoy digging through (and conducting!) research that leads the way in the design process. You’ve been around the block a few times and know what it means to design a mature, evolving product. 

Requirements (these are real, actual requirements): 

  • You must have at least three years of experience working in product or game design. Familiarity with complex or data-rich interfaces is a plus. If your experience is primarily in game design, please indicate in your cover letter why you are interested in moving to product design. 
  • You have experience designing applications for both web and mobile. In your cover letter, please include the platforms for which you have designed and your level of experience with them. 
  • We are looking for a designer who has a strong background in user experience and usability but who also can design interfaces independently. This is a truly mixed position where you will be responsible for activities traditionally held in the “UX” and “UI” wheelhouses. And the usability testing / research wheelhouse, too. (Can you have three wheelhouses? Are they still wheelhouses? Yes, we do philosophical tangents, too.)

That’s a super-brief intro to what we’re looking for. But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. Let’s talk a bit about life at YNAB, and then we’ll go into more detail about this role. 

We’re profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB was founded in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re in it for the long haul. We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our original Core Values Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’ll probably really like it here, and we can’t wait to hear from you!

We live our Core Values every day at YNAB, and we mean it when we say we are an equal opportunity employer. We believe that a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, beliefs, and experiences are critical to our success, and we are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team who loves working together to build something that matters.

We also work really hard, together, to make working at YNAB an amazing experience, and we were (humbly) proud to be named Fortune’s #1 Best Small Company to Work For for the last two years. We have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. We’d love to introduce you to a few of them!

Who you’d be working with:

We’re talking product design here, so you’ll be working with a lot of different people. We can’t even list them all, really. So we’ll start with a few of your seven fellow product designers: Alan, Cindy, Dylan, Emily, and Adam. 

Alan can be seen wearing many hats—and loving every second of it. He could be interviewing customers one day and programming a prototype in Framer the next. He loves exploring ideas with teammates and lives for that rush when the team discovers a novel solution to a difficult problem. When he’s not busy designing, he’s probably either at the gym or working to improve his culinary skills... or contemplating the conflicts that occasionally arise between the two.

Cindy sweats the small details when it comes to crafting simple, intuitive experiences. Her favorite part about the design process is learning from our customers to understand their needs. She makes research and user testing a top priority in her workflow. In her downtime, you can bet she’s starting another home improvement project—which she swears she’ll finish soon—or hiking with her dog, Summit.

Dylan loves all things design, especially getting to the simplicity found on the other side of complexity. Above his desk (ahem, kitchen table, it's a small apartment after all) sits an inconspicuous letterpressed card with Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design on it. In his spare time he's probably doing something active, watching a film, taking photos, practicing piano, reading a book. 

Emily is a design generalist, through and through. What she loves most about being a designer—besides the obvious draw of working with a team to build things people love—is how much there is to learn. Right now she's focused on honing her coding skills enough to be able to put up the occasional pull request as well as practicing the art of writing great microcopy. She enjoys reading books, cooking, biking, lifting weights, and spending time outdoors. 

Adam is a product designer from Ireland who loves to focus on how people experience YNAB, especially first-time users. He obsesses over the small details, while keeping the bigger picture in mind. You'll probably find him living in Figma, thinking about solutions to problems or finding new ways to approach things. When he's not busy with design, he'll be spending time with his two boys, Charlie and Max, and his wonderful partner, Annie!

And as we said above, you’ll also cross paths with—well—probably everyone else. People like Chris and Sophie (a couple of our engineers), Hannah or Jacob (both product managers), Jannelle (one of our technical support managers), and Kelly (our product marketing specialist).

How You’ll Work at YNAB

Now that you’ve met some of your potential future teammates, let’s talk more about YNAB as a company. Here’s how we operate:

Live Where You Want

We’re a fully remote team, so you can live and work wherever you want (with a reliable internet connection!). That said, you’ll be working predominantly with folks based in North America, so we expect that you’ll be willing and able to work North American hours for a significant portion of your time. Proximity doesn’t influence productivity, but it sure does help with communication sometimes.

No Outrageous Hours

We want everyone to have a full life outside of YNAB, and we seldom work more than 40 hours per week. There have been a few occasions where things got busy and people had to put some extra time in. But then they took some extra time off, so it all balances out. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul.

Take Vacation (Seriously)

We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for our company-wide December break). It’s important to get plenty of downtime and get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your adventures in our #office_wall or #travel Slack channel!

The YNAB Retreat

When the pandemic isn’t keeping us from traveling, we get the teams together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. So far, we’ve done Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, and most recently, Laguna Beach. We work together, play together, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a team and company. Every year, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together.

Up Your Game

We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. We budget for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, online courses and subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new… it’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing.  

U.S. or International? Great!

Our team is spread all over the world, including Switzerland, Argentina, Scotland, Canada, and all over the United States. We currently set up team members who live in the U.S. or U.K. as employees, and those who live in other countries as independent contractors. You’re an equal part of the team no matter where you live!

Benefits

For full-time W2 employees in the U.S., we offer fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. No need to check your vision, you read that right—100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, NBD, we’ve got you covered!

We also have a Traditional and Roth 401(k) option. YNAB matches your contributions up to six percent, and matches vest immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.) For U.K. employees, we also contribute six percent to your pension.

Competitive Compensation

The starting salary range for this position is $98,000 - $121,000 USD annually. We consider raises every year, and have a bi-annual profit-share bonus, which you’re in on from day one. YNAB wins, you win—that kind of thing.

Other Tidbits
  • Once you start, we DEMAND (in a friendly, ALL CAPS IS YELLING way) that you fill out your “Bucket List” spreadsheet with 50 items. (That’s harder than it sounds!) 
  • The bucket list really helps in deciding what we should give you for your birthday and the holidays.
  • We’re all adults. There’s no need to punch a clock, or ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to go see the doctor. We look at what you accomplish, not how long you’re in front of a computer.
  • We want you firing on all cylinders so we’ll set you up with a shiny new computer and replace it every three years.
  • Did we mention that YNAB makes a huge, positive difference in people’s lives? You may not think that matters much, but then a few months down the road you’ll realize it’s made your job really, really enjoyable. Don’t underestimate this one!

If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now we want to talk about you, and how you’ll play a big part in changing people’s lives.

Now, back to you, our new Product Designer...

What Success Looks Like: 

Our goal is for every customer to achieve life-changing financial control—and for the whole planet to realize it’s possible. No small thing, right? In 2022, we’re focused on making YNAB effortless for new budgeters from their very first experience, and also helping all customers see YNAB fit their needs—functional, social, and emotional—as they resolve financial struggles.

You’ll need to: 

  • Understand the journey our customers take, not just as they use our apps, but in the real world as they seek to take control of their financial lives.
  • Learn the principles, design system, and financial logic of our apps like the back of your hand. You have no problem designing a cross-platform feature for the web and mobile apps. You can clearly discern and navigate the relationship between the UI and the available data behind the scenes. 
  • Solve design problems in a customer-centric feedback loop. Research plays a big part in our design process so you’ll need to break down quantitative analytics and qualitative feedback to make informed design decisions. You’ll also follow up on the data gathered after the feature is released and continue to iterate and improve your designs until the data confirms success. 
  • Guide your work from ideation to release. You will document your work for review with fellow designers, developers, product managers, and stakeholders, make agreed-upon refinements, and will work with the developers on the upcoming feature. Design reviews during the development process examine form and function and you will see the feature through to the end. 
  • Be comfortable iterating with low-fidelity designs and prototypes while working in cross-functional teams made up of developers, product managers, marketers, and customer-facing team members (waterfalls are for rivers!), while continuing to pursue a meticulous and thorough design.
  • Communicate and document the styling, flows, and the impact of your designs on other parts of the system. You’ll update this documentation as feedback comes in and the apps evolve. On the flip side, you’ll provide feedback in design reviews that is clear and helpful in moving our products forward. We sell software, not mockups. 
  • Communicate, explain, persuade, explore and otherwise get all the things done in writing. Yes, we like talking to each other, but as a remote team, much of our collaboration is asynchronous and written.
  • Be comfortable writing a first pass at UI copy which is then refined with the help of your team in design reviews. There’s no lorem ipsum here. 
  • Speak the language of software development. If you’re also comfortable diving into HTML and CSS (or any of the programming languages in our development stack!) to help implement your design work, that’s a plus, but it’s not a requirement.
  • We use Figma for the vast majority of design work and maintaining our design system. You will aid in the expansion and maintenance of the design system and feel comfortable contributing new UI for our applications and website. If you have experience developing and maintaining design systems and can help us strike a balance between fighting for consistency and pushing the design system forward, that’s another plus.
  • Be comfortable talking to customers in interviews and usability testing. You have a knack for summarizing research in a concise way to share with teammates. 

Finally, the success of a designer at YNAB hinges upon the ability to approach design as holistic problem solving for both customer and business goals. We work collaboratively here and you’ll listen to ideas, questions, and critiques from teammates with grace and patience. That said, you know your stuff and can eloquently and logically explain design decisions. You see this type of exchange as critical to the success of yourself and our product: it is through sharing ideas and being open to the brilliance of others that we arrive at the best solutions.

How to Apply

  • Apply directly on our site here by 11:59pm PST on Sunday, January 30th. Firm. It’s a real deadline. The kind you love.
  • Attach a PDF of your cover letter (1.5 pages at most). In your cover letter:
    • Introduce yourself and explain why this position is of interest to you, and why you would be a great fit. 
    • Please include the platforms for which you have designed and your level of experience with them. 
    • If your experience is primarily in game design, please indicate why you are interested in moving to product design. 
    • We love a designer with a perspective. What’s yours? Feel free to touch on your beliefs on how design should be done, what it’s used for, or why it’s important. 
  • Please include a portfolio that contains the following: 
    • Design work across web and mobile 
    • Your design process (for example, sketches, interviews, documentation, etc.)
    • Links to any live work 
    • Please state the role you played on each project
  • If you have a prepared resume, attach it in PDF form. If you don’t have a resume because you aren’t even sure you’re looking to change jobs, that’s fine! An informal list of your work and education history is all we’re looking for.
  • Please let us know if you would like to disclose a need for accommodation in connection with the recruitment and hiring process. If so, contact us at accommodations@youneedabudget.com and indicate in the subject line that you’re applying for the Product Designer role.
  • Note: though we know it is customary in some countries, we’d prefer if you didn’t share a headshot in your application materials. Thank you!

We’re excited to hear from you!

P.S. We'll send you a confirmation email once you apply. Please add that email to your safe sender list, to ensure that future emails come through. (If you don’t receive it, please check your Promotions inbox, junk folder, or any filters you may have set up.)

P.P.S. If you’re not interested in or available for this position, but know someone who is, we would really appreciate it if you passed this along!

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