Senior Product Designer

Job Description:

Here at Rakuten Kobo Inc. we offer a casual working start-up environment and a group of friendly and talented individuals. Our employees rank us highly in terms of commitment to work/life balance. We realize that for our people to be innovative, creative and passionate they need to feel valued and supported. We believe in rewarding all our employees with competitive salaries, performance based annual bonuses, stock options and training opportunities.  

If you’re looking for a company that inspires passion, personal, and professional growth – join Kobo and come help us on our mission of making reading lives better. 

The Role: 

Rakuten Kobo Inc. is looking for aSenior Product Designer to join our Product Design Team! Kobo Product Teams are responsible for connecting our cross-functional teams to our reader’s needs all over the world. Reporting to the Director of User Experience, the Senior Product Designer plays a vital role in delivering amazing product design capabilities and features to our users, bringing us closer to our company goal of enabling people anywhere in the world to read more. Our products are designed by readers, dedicated to readers. We are focused on crafting the best experience possible for all people, all languages, and all devices. 
 

The Person will ideally have: 
 

• Strong ability to demonstrate design thinking, process and solutions. 
• Strong design aesthetic in addition to demonstrated experience in delivering effective design solutions informed by qualitative research and user testing. 
• Solid understanding of accessibility principles and prior experience in delivering WCAG compliant digital experiences. 
• Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills. 
• Strong ownership and collaborative mindset to ship products. 
• Great leadership in collaboration, design strategy, planning and creativity. 
• Proficient in UX/UI design tools in creating wireframes and prototyping. 
   

 DESIGN LEADERSHIP 

• Facilitate stakeholder workshops to drive opportunity understanding and gap analysis. 
• Conduct user opportunity mapping and how it provides business value. 
• Participate in product design discovery and definition initiatives. 

 COLLABORATION 

• Working alongside various practices such as architects, developers, researchers, analysts, product owners and product management. 
• Opportunity to work on multiple platforms such as the eReader, Apps, and Responsive Web. 
• Working and aligning across three different geos and time zones and being able to deal with Cultural Diversity and Differences in Cross-cultural Project Teams. 
• Establishing a culture of respect and transparency. 

 
DESIGN STRATEGY 

• Lead design vision of product roadmap. 
• Lead how to integrate customer centric research findings into product design decisions. 
• Lead how to ensure the product teams’ understanding of the WHY and building of the WHAT. 

 
DESIGN PLANNING 

• Translating business requirements, end user needs and input from cross-functional Business units into differentiated design solutions. 
• Create design stories and design acceptance criteria. 
• Ability to measure product design release outcomes. 

 
DESIGN CREATIVITY 

• Contribute to our design centric culture by focusing on user intent, user needs, and shareholder value.
• Actively participate in building and implementing a best-in-class design system and component library.