Welcome to Ashby!

In modern SaaS development, product teams often consist of a product manager, a designer, and ~4-5 engineers. The product manager briefs the designer who then designs. After designing, mocks are handed to the engineers.

While that may work for many product teams, Ashby takes a different approach.

Here, engineers are empowered to make their own product & design decisions. We also have design engineers who are fantastic at bridging UI, interaction design, and front-end code. Allowing engineers to also be designers has enabled us to move much faster than our competitors - but we need more help steering their design decisions!

Currently, our only full-time designer (Chris) reports to Benji, the CEO. Both Abhik and Benji (our founders) care deeply about design, which at first glance may seem counterintuitive given the number of full-time designers that we employ. The belief is not that design is unimportant, but rather that it should be owned by the product team collectively, not solely by a group of full-time designers who happen to have the job title.

The design department’s job at Ashby is not to make every single design decision but to equip our entire product team to make better decisions themselves, as well as edit decisions that PMs/Engineers choose to make. Our engineers are also expected to be self-aware enough to seek consults from design if they’re unsure about decisions, and designers will be given the largest, riskiest projects to tackle.

What We’re Building

Talent teams aspire to build a hiring process that identifies great candidates, moves them quickly through the interview process, and provides an excellent experience for the candidate. To accomplish this, recruiters perform thousands of daily tasks to coordinate and relay information between candidates, interviewers, and hiring managers. Teams struggle to keep up!

Scheduling a final round is an excellent example of our customers’ challenges. A recruiter needs to collect availability from the candidate, identify potential interviewers, perform “Calendar Tetris” to find who is available to interview the candidate, schedule on the earliest date possible, and perform any last-minute adjustments as availability changes. They must perform this while considering the interview load on each individual and whether interviewers need to be trained and shadowing others.

Ashby provides talent teams with intelligent and powerful software that provides insights into where they’re failing and automates or simplifies many of the tasks they’re underwater with. We put a lot of effort into designing products that are approachable to beginners but mastered and extended by power users. In many ways, spreadsheets set the bar here (and are what we often replace!).

We have many customers, great revenue growth, years of runway, and amazing investors like YCombinator, Elad Gil, and Lachy Groom. I’ll share more once we meet.

Why you should or shouldn’t apply

Your qualifications:

• 4+ years of product design experience in desktop SaaS.

• Some experience in an early-stage startup.

• Able to think from first principles instead of simply applying the “standard” UX processes.

• Can break down complex user problems by asking questions that narrow down the solution space.

• Enough experience that your intuition can solve many usability problems without having to rely solely on data & metrics or conducting user research.

• Curious & resourceful enough to come up with creative solutions and de-risk them appropriately.

• Strong skills in layout, navigation, IA, UI, and interaction design.

• Strong visual design skills and obsess over craft & details.

• As a bonus, you have experience leading design at an early-stage startup or have spent time as a solo designer on a team.

You may want to apply if you’re excited about:

• The leverage you can create as designer no. 2 and the impact you’ll have by attempting to level up the design skills of 25+ engineers through documentation, consulting and coaching. You won’t be a cog in the wheel, the wheel is not very big!

• Getting to work on all parts of a massive product surface area - spanning many user types, JTBDs, usability challenges, etc. Unlike in other organizations, you won’t be stuck working on one problem for many years.

• Helping reinvent the design model for modern enterprise software - you don’t have to build wireframes, user journeys, personas, etc. what matters is you solve a customer’s problem; what tools you use is up to you.

• Covering all parts of the design process with a focus on design craft. You’ll still be doing the occasional user research interview but will be focused on using heuristics & experience to improve our IA, navigation, interactions, UI patterns, and more.

• Helping build our design system from (almost) the ground up.

Conversely, you may not want to apply if:

• You feel uncomfortable designing independently without much guidance from a PM or design management.

• You’re uncomfortable having your decisions and process being challenged constantly by engineering & product.

• You prefer an in-person role over remote (Ashby operates remotely).

• You dislike written documentation.

• You want a set structure and rhythm to your projects.

  • PM gives you a brief, you do wireframes, then mocks, then pass off work to engineers. Rinse and repeat.

• You prefer a narrow job scope - interaction design only, design system only, etc.

On a weekly basis you will find yourself:

• Consulting for engineers who need help structuring layout, typography, flows, etc.

• Digging into problems by consulting GTM, talking to customers, asking for data requests, and more in order to present confident assumptions about your proposals.

• Using Figma to draw out your ideas and create visual artifacts for stakeholder alignment.

• Writing specification docs (we call them specs!) that detail your design proposals. These documents are meant to get stakeholder alignment on the biggest decisions you want to make and are a core part of how we work at Ashby.

• Taking ownership of larger product features and thinking through Jobs-To-Be-Done, navigation, information architecture, layout, interaction, etc.

• Consolidating and refining our design system to be functional, aesthetic, and best-in-class.

Interview Process

At Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. We’ll dive into past projects and simulate working together and talking through decisions. Our interview process is four rounds with some casual Zoom (or in-person) coffee in between to get to know each other: 

1. 30-minute introduction call to discuss Ashby and your experience

2. 45-minute portfolio review

3. 90-minute design exercise & portfolio review (45m each). Portfolio review is a repeat but with different team members. The exercise can be a take-home or a live whiteboarding exercise, whichever you’re more comfortable with!

4. A virtual on-site of roughly 2 hrs. This will include meeting the team, a product teardown, and more!

Your hiring manager will be your main point of contact and prepare you for interviews. You’ll meet other engineers and product managers as well (with 15 minutes in each interview to ask them questions). If we don’t give an offer, we’ll provide feedback if you’d like it!

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.

• 10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.

• Unlimited PTO with four weeks recommended per year. Expect “Vacation?” in our one-on-one agenda until you start taking it.

• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.

• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!

• $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.

• If you’re in the US, top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us.

Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. I hope that excites you enough to apply.

Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.