Full-Time Digital product designer
Job Description
At our cooperative Village One we design and build digital products + infrastructure: Designers, developers and researchers working together in one team on purposeful projects with nice clients. Are you a digital product designer? Apply to join us!
These are the facts
- Village One are a small cooperative studio for digital products and infrastructure with a multidisciplinary team
- We’re looking for a digital product designer to join us and shape how we do design
- Unlimited contract, six months probation, afterwards you can become a member/owner of our cooperative
- We are running on a four day workweek = 32h/week. Fewer hours can be agreed upon individually
- We are a distributed team, this is a remote job, we don’t have an office
- Mostly async communication, so were open to lots of timezones (most of us are based in MEZ)
- We employ German residents directly, international employmentgoes through an EOR service (such as remote.com)
- Our team language is english
- Start date is flexible
- All experience levels welcome
- Salary range is 3000-4.500€ brutto per month, regardless of location
- We encourage everyone to apply who brings in a new perspective
About this position
For this role, we’re looking for a versatile interface designer with a focus on design systems: Working together with the team to create visual languages, and translating them into usable and scalable design systems will be one of your main tasks. There will also be enough time and space to explore your own ideas and interests in the field, and to bring them into the company.
We work four days a week – the structure of your work week is flexible due to our asynchronous way of working. All sorts of life designs are welcome!
We are a distributed team without an office, so your physical location is not really important to us. Most of us are based in the MEZ timezone (Berlin/Europe) and 2 – 4 hours overlap in working time would be great.
Who we’re looking for
- At Village One, we believe we work best as a team of people from diverse backgrounds, in a environment built on support and trust. We especially encourage people from underrepresented groups in the field, e.g. cis and trans women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ folks, neurodivergent people, with disabilities and/or chronic diseases, people from non-academic backgrounds, and discriminated groups to reach out and contact us for this position.
- For this role, you’ll need to have experience in interface design and know your tools, e.g. Figma, Sketch, Adobe CC, typography, workshop methods and -tools. Not all these tools, mind you, but some of them!
- You’ve worked with design systems before: setting them up, keeping them alive and working together with developers to implement them.
- You care about design details, be it functional or visual, and have a good feeling for typographic details.
- You are comfortable with managing your own workflow, documenting your work for others to understand and talking about it (within our team and with clients). We are not suppliers, we partner with our clients and meet them on eye-level. Communication and (self)management skills are needed for our asynchronous, remote workflows. But don’t worry, if you don’t have too much experience with this yet, we’re a team and here to support each other!
- We’re open for newcomers and career jumpers. We’re looking to work with curious people who care to work on meaningful things; we do not expect you to know and excel at everything. We foster a culture of exchange, learning and encouragement.
Salary, vacation days and employment
Besides flexible working times, a tech setup of your choice and an equal voice within the company, we offer an education budget of 4.000€ per year. All our salaries are discussed openly. As we’re a very young company (founded in July 2022), this range currently is between 3.000 and 4.500€ per month, depending on part- or full-time roles and experience. We aim to raise this range as soon as it’s financially viable. We offer six weeks of vacation per year. All these parameters are up for discussion and can be tailored to your needs and the company’s possibilities.
Our cooperative is incorporated in Germany which means we can employ any German resident directly. International employment will happen through an Employer of Record service. We’ll try to keep employment parameters as similar as possible across countries, but there might be some local variations (e.g. the amount of public holidays). We won’t adjust salary based on location, as we believe the same contribution should mean the same salary, regardless of gender, age or where you like to spend your life.
The start date is flexible, we don’t have a specific timeline in mind and are willing to wait a few weeks or months for the right person. Still, sooner is better!
Who we are and what we do
Our main focus at Village One is designing and building digital products: Websites, digital infrastructure, visual identities with a digital focus. Our role, and especially the designer’s role, is to explore what’s possible, spark new ideas and make them tangible. We work on client projects and down the line also on our own products.
Within projects we try to get to the core of user needs, develop new ideas in workshops, create sketches and prototypes, as well as detailed user interfaces. We aim to work on products that make society more just and sustainable, rather than fueling the exploitative capitalist system. For our design practice that means that we use calm design principles, create clear interfaces with a focus on accessibility and we avoid dark patterns.
As a cooperative, we have high standards regarding our work environment and the projects we take on. We have a wish- and block list for clients, and as all members of the cooperative have an equal voice, everyone has a say in what projects we take on, how we structure our work and who joins us. You can learn more on why we’re a cooperative here.
What’s it like working at Village One
Joining Village One means eventually becoming an equal owner of the company, with an equal say in decision-making, shaping the company and full transparency about its inner workings. That gives all members the same amount of power, and comes with equal shares of responsibilites and flexibility. Find out more about the general idea of cooperatives.
We believe that work is part of life, and not the other way round. Especially creative work does not always happen between 9 and 5, and as we foster asynchronous working practices, you can structure your day to your liking. We still work together and are a team, so exchange is important—but we avoid unneccessary meetings and rather focus on productive shared design and ideation sessions when needed. The skill to document your work in written form is important to keep the team involved and up to date. We communicate in English; German is a plus!
Our team at Village One currently consists of four people: Fei and Harry steering development, Doro for all strategic parts, and Christoph taking on all things Design. Through this open position, we’re looking for a person to join Christoph and form a small and capable digital design team.
We’ve written more in detail about the process of joining us as a cooperative here – but don’t be overwhelmed, we’ll get to that part in detail later-on anyway.
How to Apply
Send us an e-mail with some details about yourself: Your name, location, work experience as a CV, along with some previous work in form of a portfolio website or PDF. Please also share what motivates you to join Village One and a cooperative. If you’re still unsure and want to know more about this position and see whether we’re a good fit for each other – please reach out, too! Applications are open until January 12th, 2023, and we will review all submissions then. There is no advantage in being early—take your time! We will send you a short confirmation that we received your application! We’re excited to hear from you!451 total views, 0 today