Lead Product Designer

Company: WATS

Reports to: COO, Laura Rosenshine

Details: Full Time

Location: New York, NY (Hybrid) preferred, open to remote candidates

Do you crave more impact in your role? Are you looking to break into climate tech, and interested in joining an early-stage company going after a massive market opportunity?

About WATS: 

We are a climate tech startup bringing waste expertise into the hands of businesses of all sizes. Our software helps businesses digitize and optimize their waste operations, report on carbon impacts, and comply with shifting environmental regulations, all while finding cost savings along the way. Our goal is to make WATS the platform for businesses to solve all their waste management needs.

WATS is led by two female co-founders (Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli and Laura Rosenshine) with over 2 decades of experience in the commercial waste industry, focusing on delivering zero waste solutions in New York City. 

Meredith and Laura are die-hard zero waste experts and are highly motivated to have a massive impact in the world of waste management to make sure that we leave it in a better place than we found it. Our company mission is to improve the way waste is valued and handled. That means we want to improve how our customers see waste and understand the opportunities to divert that waste from landfills.

WATS closed their Seed round in Q3 2024, securing $3.5 million in venture capital.  

Our Culture:

Our founders are passionate waste experts striving to build a team of passionate product builders who also see that today’s waste problems require an entirely new solution. We love our users because they are at the forefront of wanting to build this change with us. Our team culture values empathy, transparency, and continuous learning. We deeply believe that with a shared understanding of the problem space, a focus on our user’s needs, and a collaborative, low-ego mindset, our team can develop creative, effective solutions to help our clients reduce waste. 

About the Role:

We’re looking for a talented and passionate Lead Product Designer to own the end-to-end user experience as the first internal designer. 

In this role, you will be responsible for creating a meaningful and differentiated product and brand experience, redefining how businesses think about waste management. As the first full-time designer, you’ll be working closely with the Lead Product Manager doing everything from user interviews to refining our design system. The Lead Product Designers main goal will be to design effective software in collaboration with the engineering and operations team. You will also collaborate with the CEO and COO, leading the development of sales assets and behavior-change educational assets for our users.

What You Will Do:

• Create simple, intuitive, and functional designs. You'll translate complex ideas into flows and interfaces that customers love, drive strong outcomes for the business, and continuously elevate the quality of our products.
• Relentlessly focus on the customer experience. Through a combination of user interviews, surveys, and an iterative and fast-paced design process.
• Define and prioritize problems. You'll partner closely with a product manager and engineers to break down and clearly define problems and align on which ones to prioritize.
• Help craft the product roadmap and strategy. Using your customer insights, work closely with the founders and Lead PM to define the product roadmap.
• Partner with engineers to ensure that design work is implemented as intended. You'll provide engineers with clear guidance about how your design work is meant to be implemented and provide feedback during the build process to ensure that what we ship meets a high quality standard.
• Partner with the co-founders to build assets to drive sales.
• Work closely with the CSM team and co-founders to build creative assets to help train our clients on best waste management practices.

Experience We Are Looking For:

• 4+ years of product design experience. You’ve had ample experience leading design and shipping product improvements in a cross-functional team environment.
• Experience at an early stage startup, ideally, as the first product designer.
• Demonstrated ability to distill complex systems into a simple, intuitive experience.
• Experience working with B2B brands and achieving the balance of simple, robust software required to drive enterprise adoption.
• Strong grasp of design tools, such as Figma, and the ability to make compelling, high fidelity prototypes, to surface in UX research and use with engineering to aid implementation.
• The ability to communicate design concepts into an understandable and clear narrative for internal stakeholders.
• Experience across the entire design lifecycle, from user research, to wireframe and rapid properate in a self-directed environment.

Nice-to-have:

• Personal interest in sustainability
• Experience at a tech company with a good reputation
• B2B experience
• Basic video editing skills
• Brand design experience

Diverse Perspectives

We know that innovation thrives on product teams where diverse points of view come together to solve hard problems. We seek people that bring diverse life experiences, educational backgrounds, cultures, and work experiences.

Benefits and PTO: 

• Health, Dental and Vision with employer contributions
• 401(k) plan using Carbon Collective Investing
• 20 days PTO (inclusive of vacation and sick days)

Work Authorization: 

This is a full time position and not eligible for sponsorship, the individual must be a permanent resident or citizen of Canada or the United States.

• Health, Dental and Vision with employer contributions
• 401(k) plan using Carbon Collective Investing

Rate and terms: 

• $155-$185K
• Equity 0.1-.25%

Location: New York City preferred with a flexible hybrid schedule, our organization operates on an EST work schedule.

To apply: Looking to hire perfect applicants ASAP, this job was posted on 8/17/24. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until the role is filled.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.