Senior UI/UX Designer, PubPub

Accepting applications until Friday, December 15, 2023.

Knowledge Futures is hiring a full-time Senior UI/UX Designer to own our design systems and process and drive the day-to-day UI/UX development of PubPub, our core academic publishing product. We’re looking for someone with a unique mix of a high-level understanding of design techniques and processes, daily component design and prototyping experience, and, ideally, an interest in the academic publishing industry. We will pay you competitively, let you work a 4-day, 32-hour workweek from wherever you want, and take you and your ideas seriously. Join us!

Knowledge Futures, founded as a partnership between the MIT Press and the MIT Media Lab, is a non-profit institution that builds public digital infrastructure that enables communities to publish documents and data more effectively.

PubPub—an open-source publishing platform used by over 3,000 journals, conferences, books, and other diverse publishing communities—offers collaborative document editing, robust academic support, and dynamic content features. We believe that open, collaborative, community-driven tools help researchers focus on their goals and further their work.

The Community Team engages directly with PubPub users and potential users via KF Membership, Content Services, and a range of communications avenues, from help documentation to newsletters to our publication Commonplace. We work as stewards of ideas, collaborating to turn plans into practice and influence cultural change along the way. Our efforts also help shape PubPub, as a platform that is responsive to user needs and requests. In 2022, the Community Services Menu launched, formalizing partnership-based publishing support with offerings that reflect user needs.

• Help streamline our design process to be more efficient, evidence-based, and iterative
• Steward the overall design vision for PubPub
• Work with product & engineering teams to gather user requirements for feature development using a variety of feedback collection techniques
• Develop high-fidelity mockups and/or in-browser prototypes for feature components
• Work closely with engineers to design accessible user interface elements for features
• Help QA and troubleshoot new features prior to launch

• You've set up design systems, tooling (e.g. Figma) and processes (e.g. design sprints) for small, iterative teams
• You have strong opinions about how a product's purpose and goals should translate to user experience and look and feel
• You have daily experience designing functional UI mockups and/or in-browser prototypes
• You have a solid grounding in what makes a web-based product snappy, intuitive, and accessible.
• You want to work on a team that respects your ideas about the design, user experience, and ethics of software, not just the prototypes you produce.
• You want to build tools that empower people without preying on them.
• You’re ready to work on a small product team that will expect you to make and own significant decisions about design and user experience, and engage with questions about product direction.
• You want breathing room to experiment, be thoughtful, and get things right, but without losing sight of an active user base and an ambitious roadmap.

Benefits

• Work 4 days per week with a thoughtfully distributed team: we were a remote team before it was a global necessity, and put a lot of effort into making the remote experience a great one. Last summer, we experimented with working 4 days per week (8 hours per day), and never looked back. Learn more about how we work in our Handbook. As it becomes safe to travel and gather again, we are resuming our roughly biannual in-person team retreats at fun locations throughout the U.S., which began with our Vermont retreat in the fall of 2021, NYC "field trip" in spring 2022, and New Orleans retreat in fall 2022.
• Enjoy industry-standard perks: a minimum of 5 weeks off per year that we require you to actually use, best-in-class health benefits with generous company contributions, 401k with generous matching, your own computer of choice, a stipend for setting up your home office, and the ability to work 4 days per week, fully remote — with regular in-person team retreats as safety allows — with a team that prioritizes remote participation.
• Contribute to our larger mission at Knowledge Futures: we’re building a future where the infrastructure to create, access and validate knowledge is controlled by people who serve the public interest, which we apply to our own work. As a KF team member, you’ll be able to contribute to building the company itself and documenting those efforts, as well as engage in larger industry conversations.

You must be legally authorized to work in the United States to apply for this role.

We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds with diverse skillsets. If you have significant personal experience or engagement with low-income communities, international communities, or fields and languages that are underrepresented in academia, scholarly publishing, or open data, we strongly encourage you to apply.

This job description is intended to be a guidepost, not a checklist. If you feel like you could do a great job in this role, even if you don’t exactly meet every qualification, please consider applying. And if you’re still hesitant after reading this bold text, send us a short note anyway with any questions you have about qualifications.

The salary for this position is $135,446 (Product Team, level 4) plus benefits. In late 2022 we implemented a no-negotiation salary system designed to increase fairness and transparency and reduce bias in compensation by paying the same salary in each function/level across the company regardless of location or tenure. We base starting salaries on industry medians in New York City (no matter where you're based), automatically adjust twice per year to account for cost of living so you don't need to demand raises or seek offers elsewhere, and provide clear pathways for promotion with large compensation increases (while not requiring you to seek promotion to stay in good standing and keep up with inflation/industry trends). Read our full compensation policy for more details.

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