Director of Design (Product / UX) - Oracle Utilities / Opower Oracle
San Francisco, CA

Job Description

Manage a team that designs, develops, troubleshoots and debugs software programs for databases, applications, tools, networks etc.

As a director of the software engineering division, you will apply your extensive knowledge of software architecture to manage software development tasks associated with developing, debugging or designing software applications, operating systems and databases according to provided design specifications. Build enhancements within an existing software architecture and envision future improvements to the architecture.

Assists in the development of short, medium, and long term plans to achieve strategic objectives. Regularly interacts across functional areas with senior management or executives to ensure unit objectives are met. Ability to influence thinking or gain acceptance of others in sensitive situations. Demonstrated leadership and people management skills. Strong communication skills, analytical skills, thorough understanding of product development. BS or MS degree or equivalent experience relevant to functional area. 7 years of software engineering or related experience.

Oracle will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of San Francisco's Fair Chance Ordinance.

Oracle is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans status or any other characteristic protected by law.

About the Job

Do you dream of designing products that have a positive impact on a global scale? Are you an experienced designer and design leader looking to lead a high-performing team where your impact will be felt immediately? At Oracle Utilities / Opower, we know that by engaging utility customers about their energy use, we can help them lower their bills and reduce energy usage. We are driven by helping utilities and their customers move toward a clean energy future, fundamentally changing the relationship between customers and their utilities, and anticipating the future of the utility industry.

We are seeking an inspiring designer and leader to helm our team of UX designers, researchers, visual designers and writers responsible for designing product, providing design consultancy during deployment, and contributing to continual improvement of our product offerings. The right leader will also be ready and willing to communicate the value of our proven and unique design approach more broadly across our organization.

You are excited to shape and advocate a strong design vision across our entire business, foster an environment of collaboration and transparency between teams, and set the right tone for our organization's dynamic. This comes naturally to you as a fundamental aspect of your professional style, while you remain even-keeled and consensus-driven. Your interest and ability to guide the team and collaborate across the organization is facilitated by your openness, approachability, and reliability. You recognize the importance of balance -- work/life but also on-the-job -- and you know how to get things done.

If making a positive impact on the world is important to you, and you identify with the qualities we've described here, we'd love to speak with you.

About the Team

We're a small team (10-15) responsible for a large product footprint. We're passionate about our mission and inspired by the power of design. Together, we bring a broad set of skills and capabilities to our design practice, and we are always working to better integrate our talents in service of more effective solutions.

To learn more about us, please visit our UX team site: https://ux.opower.com/

What You'll Make Happen:

* Get up to speed on Opower and Oracle Utilities products and behavioral science fundamentals.
* Provide leadership to a talented team of designers, researchers, and creatives.
* Work with team leadership to define and continually improve our design process.
* Apply your knowledge of design research to benefit strategically the design process and our product suite.
* Advocate and continually calibrate the relationship between design/development and our engineering teams
* Encourage a healthy balance between work and life that meets the needs of each team member based on their abilities, aspirations, and availability.
* Act as the user-advocate in cross-functional teams with product and engineering.
* Lead high-visibility hands-on design projects from concept through delivery.
* Contribute to Oracle's design culture -- and Opower's strong and established design framework -- with your own unique talents, and grow your career down a path that's right for you.
* Maintain team staffing and composition in alignment with our organizational goals.

You Get Excited By:

* Teaching and mentoring individuals to the success of the team.
* Doing hands-on design work: you enjoy laboring just as much as helping others succeed. On our team, everyone participates in the design process.
* Designing for the underserved: you love accessible and responsive technologies that meet the needs of consumers and professionals alike.
* Research & analytics: you are fascinated and driven by data and findings of user research, and understand when and how to leverage quant & qual alike.
* The importance of practicing user-centered design.
* Process, frameworks, and a challenge to wrestle with.

Preferred Qualifications

* BA/BS in a design-oriented discipline (or equivalent work experience)
* 10 years relevant design or research experience
* 5 years managing a team; team size ranging from 5-30 would be ideal, and experience managing managers is a plus
* A passion for managing high-performing design teams
* A mixture of experience in enterprise and consumer-facing product design; B2B2C experience preferred

Show us your Stuff

We want to learn about initiatives you drove, teams you led and championed, and your overall approach to management and leadership. We'll look for you to provide a portfolio and/or sampling of work that includes user-friendly consumer and/or enterprise product designs to showcase your skills, process, team management, cross-organizational collaboration, and creativity for approaching interesting challenges.

Position Location: Onsite at Oracle office in San Francisco, CA (475 Sansome Street)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end of relevant info