VMware is hiring a Senior Staff Product Designer to shape future of the Cloud
In a nutshell, here’s the TL;DR: VMware is hiring a Senior Staff Product Designer based in Palo Alto, California to shape the user experience of VMware Cloud.
At VMware, we are inspired by organizations creating innovative business models and developing products and services that are changing the world in ways big and small. We are committed to empowering our customers to succeed by helping them meet their toughest technological challenges. Post pioneering the virtualization era, VMware now delivers a uniquely consistent cloud platform to run, manage, connect, and secure applications across any cloud. This strategic market positioning has helped our customers accommodate new business demands and find their place in the world of private-hybrid-public clouds.
VMware has stayed true to its roots, venturing into new areas that help our customers navigate critical enterprise challenges. Over the past few years, the VMware Cloud portfolio has expanded from being a single offering which accelerated cloud migration to now being a full blown suite of services built on a single Hybrid Cloud Platform, accelerating innovation by leveraging consistent infrastructure and operations from the data center to cloud and to the edge. Also, seamlessly enabling Hybrid IT for our customers’ Network, Virtual Desktop and Cloud deployments with Hybrid Cloud Solutions. It’s no surprise that we have been recognized as CRN’s Hybrid Cloud Product of the Year .
But our story does not end here —according to the 2019 Internet Trends Report, 22% of all workloads globally are now cloud deployments scaling 2X the number it was 5 years ago.
“More than a third of organizations see cloud investments as one of the top three investing priorities, turning it into a $330 billion market by 2022.” — Gartner
No doubt that cloud services are taking the enterprise world by storm. and VMware Cloud is at the epicenter of riding that wave, helping hundreds of leading enterprise organizations move & scale on the cloud quickly and consistently. That’s why this role of a Senior Staff Product Designer has become our highest priority. So what really is this role all about?
About the role
At VMware, Sr. Staff is one of the highest levels of leadership in design. As an individual contributor, they’ll help define design strategy, vision, and roadmap. They are part of the leadership team driving the strategic direction of user experience for a product line and/or a business unit.
On VMware Cloud, you’ll be the product designer with the highest responsibility and influence. You’ll partner with engineering and product management leaders across business units to help define the vision for how VMware can enable our customers to consistently build, run & manage their infrastructure on the cloud.
You’ll define the design strategy and drive execution on end to end integrated experiences that help customers modernize and protect their infrastructure and applications with VMware’s Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), increase consumption, and ramp up across products through solutions ranging from cloud migration to simplifying Kubernetes management. You’ll also architect the customer journey to include the first ever as-a-service solutions for On-Premises Infrastructure on the edge.
You’ll work with product designers across a suite of products, and help drive end to end workflows, establish design quality, communication and collaboration throughout the process.
You’ll drive the future of VMware Cloud as a platform as well as identify areas of investment for user experience to improve and iterate on the experience we are delivering to our customers.
You’ll also work closely across the organization with other design leaders & our customers to focus on end to end experiences that are enabled by multiple VMware technologies. Thereby enabling an “One Integrated Experience”, which is one of the key objectives for VMware this year.
Also, as a leader within the design team, you’ll mentor product designers and help influence direction for the rest of the design organization.
Sounds exciting, right? So here’s what we are in looking for in you!
About you
You are a problem solver. You love bringing clarity to ambiguity and thrive on solving complex enterprise-level problems. You are a great communicator who can listen and understand customers, cross-functional team members, and product designers and then formulate and articulate a vision and strategy.
You’re an opinionated decision maker who understands and listens to different perspectives but is able to make firm decisions on behalf of VMware’s customers.
You like simplifying complex systems and approaching uncharted areas. You are a business leader as much as a design leader focused on delivering great solutions that VMware can build to solve real customer problems. You understand tradeoffs and are able to make them in a balanced way. You have the curiosity to learn the breadth and depth of new domains.
About us
We’re a team of makers: product designers, researchers, and UI engineers working together to advance user experience in the enterprise space. We LOVE solving complex problems. To us, design is the method to solve real problems for real customers.
We love experimenting, trying new paths, and taking risks. We don’t just say this to sound Silicon Valley cool, we truly appreciate the value of risk-taking.
We believe in the importance of psychological safety and building a team that continues to improve. We truly have an open-door policy and focus less on titles and levels and more on the shortest path to getting things done.
Ownership is important to us. This is the place to drive decisions, design, and experiences that will define how the cloud operates.
We’re warm, at least that’s how we describe our culture. We think time spent at work should be productive but fun. We’re serious about getting things done but the balance of life and work is important to us. In fact, it’s important to all of VMware starting with Pat, our CEO.
We’ve seen enough change over the last two years to know that more change is possible, and we do what’s needed to make it happen. We have each other’s backs and are candid with each other when we give feedback. We don’t let short-term discomfort stand in the path of long-term growth for all of us.
We believe in diversity and inclusion. We care about being able to bring our true selves to work. We don’t want you to just fit in, we want you to belong. This is your team.
So how to apply?
Don’t you hate it when a company’s recruiting process is a black box? We do too. So lets break it down into a simple process and what to expect next:
- You’ll apply using this link. We expect you to provide a resume and a portfolio. In this portfolio, we’d like to get to know you and the work you’ve led and done. We actually wrote an article about what we look for in Product Design Portfolio. We understand that at your level, you’re not building every pixel. That’s okay. We want to learn more about the problems you’ve solved, your process, the impact you made, and your takeaways.
- We’ll reach back to you once we’ve had the chance to review your info. Generally, this happens within a couple of weeks.
- We’ll do a one-hour call with one of our Senior Staff Product Designers to go through your portfolio. This is as much us interviewing you as it is you interviewing us and a chance to make sure this is a fit for you and us.
- If it appears that there is a good fit, we’ll move to a full on-site interview loop.
- In the full on-site interview loop, you’ll meet with our design leaders, designers on the team, and engineering partners. We’ll go through a portfolio review with the team, then you’ll have the chance to chat 1-on-1 with specific individuals on our team.
This role is based in Palo Alto, California.
If you want to reshape enterprise design while making an impact on the hybrid cloud market and make a few friends and have fun along the way, this role is for you.
Have any questions? Hit me up on Twitter / LinkedIn (my DMs are open).
Join our team
If this position is not the right one for you, but you’re still interested in joining the VMware Design team, we have many available positions here.
