Now Hiring: Humbly Assured Director of Product

November 9, 2024

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About Us and Why We’re Hiring

We’re YNAB (“why-nab”), a monetary training firm with a budgeting app. We train 4 Guidelines that create a brand new relationship with cash—one the place you like the way you spend and have fun the way you save. For greater than a decade, folks have been utilizing YNAB after which telling their pals what a distinction it has made of their lives. Try our neighborhood on Fb, TikTok, or Reddit (actually!), or learn a few of our app evaluations, and also you’ll see what we imply. We love constructing one thing that has an enormous optimistic influence on folks’s lives.

YNAB is rising, and so is our management workforce. You’re the Director of Product we’re on the lookout for for those who perceive the cross-functional nature of product deeply. You’re adept at creating priorities and actions out of bigger concepts, serving to the mandatory work cascade all through our product org and reaching desired outcomes. You’re taking possession of integrating parts of the product org, together with technique, execution, administration, and communication.

In case you’re the one we’re on the lookout for, you have got excessive requirements for all features of product growth. You nurture, evangelize, coach, and train these requirements—and maintain the group accountable for them. You don’t dictate roadmaps by fiat; you construct and nurture a system of empowered specialists and work alongside them to floor the very best choices. You assist everybody to realize their finest work—together with making the mandatory errors alongside the best way.

Necessities (these are actual, precise necessities)

It mainly goes with out saying that we’re on the lookout for a pacesetter in product, however simply to be clear: That doesn’t imply you’ve held a sure title for a sure time. However we anticipate that you simply’ll be most profitable on this position you probably have deep and wealthy expertise as a member of a product org (whether or not that be in product administration, design, or engineering), together with alternatives to have exercised consequential management.

On this position, you’ll have 4 predominant obligations:

Your main focus might be organizational readability, so you need to have expertise in search of and speaking readability in all instructions from a product org.
You’ll accomplice with others to tell our product technique and—most critically—lead on making it actionable, so you could be a grasp strategic decision-maker who can join the dots between our high-level mission and imaginative and prescient, firm technique, and enterprise wants.
You’ll foster a world-class product tradition at YNAB, which you already know out of your expertise means obsessing equally about our folks and our product.
Lastly, you’ll be accountable for ensuring that everybody has the prospect to execute, particularly within the product administration workforce, so you need to be expert at collaborating with others throughout all firm capabilities to ascertain key routines and practices that take away roadblocks.

That’s an excellent transient intro to what you’ll be engaged on. However first, you could know for those who’ll even like working with us. Let’s discuss a bit about life at YNAB, after which we’ll go into extra element about what we’re on the lookout for.

YNAB began in 2004 and we haven’t taken any exterior funding—we’re established, worthwhile, and on this for the lengthy haul. We’ve got one overarching requirement in terms of becoming a member of our workforce: our authentic Core Values Manifesto has to essentially click on with you. In case you’re nodding emphatically whereas studying it, you’ll most likely actually prefer it right here, and we are able to’t wait to listen to from you!

We dwell our Core Values daily at YNAB, and we imply it once we say we’re an equal alternative employer. We imagine {that a} range of backgrounds, talents, beliefs, and experiences is vital to our success, and we’re obsessed with making a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative surroundings for all workers. All are inspired to use as we proceed to develop a sensible, hard-working, and various workforce that loves working collectively to construct one thing that issues.

We additionally work actually onerous, collectively, to make working at YNAB an incredible expertise, and we’re (humbly) proud to have obtained lots of Fortune’s “excellent place to work” awards during the last a number of years. We’ve got a workforce filled with actually distinctive folks—the type you’ll be excited to work with. We’d like to introduce you to a couple of them!

Who you’ll be working with:

You’ll be a detailed accomplice to Todd, our CEO, in your entire product course of. Todd began at YNAB in 2010 after a seek for a budgeting answer ended up in a dialog with YNAB’s founder, Jesse. One job led to a different, and since then he’s been part of creating and scaling up Help, Product Design, and Product Administration at YNAB till, in February of 2021, he grew to become YNAB’s CEO. He lives in a small New England city along with his spouse and three youngsters, the place he retains life so simple as he can—consuming, sleeping, sitting, feeding the birds, reducing flowers, and ultrarunning.

You’ll operate and lead most carefully with Buffy, our Director of Engineering, and Dylan, our Design Director.

Buffy has been a Buffy since earlier than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and one in every of her life regrets isn’t shopping for buffy.com whereas she was in faculty. She loves an excellent debugging session. When she’s not cleansing up our infrastructure, she’s most likely knitting socks, biking, or in any other case frolicking outside along with her household. She’s a lifelong New Englander, so make sure you inform her you like vacationing “in Cape Cod” after which please, watch her face very rigorously for a response.

Dylan loves organizing design methods, obsessing over typographic particulars, and every little thing in between. Above his desk (ahem, kitchen desk, it’s a small residence in any case) sits an not easily seen letterpressed card with Dieter Rams’ 10 rules of excellent design on it. In his spare time he’s most likely taking pictures or operating—generally on the similar time.

In truth, you’ll have interactions and affect throughout your entire product org, and also you’ll additionally cross paths with—properly—most likely everybody else at YNAB. We will’t even checklist all of them, actually. However we are able to say that folks like Jacob and Brenda (a few our PMs), Kathryn and Jack (each designers), Sebastian and Lindsey (our Heads of Know-how and Advertising), and Eva and Rachel (our information scientist and product operations specialist) certain are excited to work with you.

How You’ll Work at YNAB

Now that you simply’ve met a few of your potential future teammates, let’s discuss extra about YNAB as an organization. Right here’s how we function:

Reside The place You Need

We’re a distributed workforce, so you’ll be able to dwell and work wherever you need. Proximity doesn’t affect productiveness. Taylor, our Technical Fellow, was touring who-knows-where for a few years earlier than he settled again within the U.S. Need to up and transfer to France for a yr? Positive, Todd did that. Don’t like France? How about browsing in Hawaii, the place Rachel trotted off to for a month. Tulsa Distant? Can do. Product supervisor Megan formally lists “nomadic” as her house location on her Strava profile. The distant Canadian wilderness? We’ve obtained folks there, too. Not all of us transfer round, however the truth that these people have is completely okay as a result of we’re all adults. Simply ensure you have a willingness to make your location work for others, too. Oh, and a dependable web connection. Like, a extremely good one. Please.

Work 4 Days a Week

We’ve adopted a four-day work week (nonetheless 100% paid!) and barely work greater than that. There are events and seasons the place issues get busy and other people put some further time in—however then we encourage them to take some further day off, too. We work onerous and sensible and we care deeply about what we do, however we additionally love our households and about 2,000 different issues. We’ve got perspective and, finally, we expect it makes us—and our work—even higher.

Flex Your Work Schedule

We’re absolutely distant, so a number of our work is finished asynchronously, however we love working collectively in real-time when it is sensible. We attempt to schedule most conferences between 12-3pm Jap time (16:00-19:00 UTC) Monday-Thursday. Outdoors of your conferences, we belief you to set your individual schedule by balancing your workforce’s wants with your individual wants. You don’t must ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to see the physician, or be “lively” on Slack for those who’re working deeply on a undertaking. We have a look at what you accomplish—not when or how lengthy you’re in entrance of a pc.

Take Trip (Critically)

We wish you to take trip. In reality, now we have a minimal trip coverage of three weeks per yr, and we encourage you to take as much as 5 weeks (plus you get an additional two weeks for our company-wide December Break yearly). It’s essential to get loads of downtime and to get out and do one thing. We’ll look ahead to seeing footage of your adventures in our #office_wall Slack channel!

Meet Your Workforce

A few of our greatest work (and bonding!) is finished in individual. You’ll typically have the chance to fulfill together with your workforce a couple of times a yr, at a small-team work-focused meetup or at our firm retreat. On the YNAB retreat, we like to make amends for spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Greatest Western convention room. Simply kidding. (It’s truly onerous to put in writing that sentence, even realizing it’s such an excellent joke.) Up to now, we’ve gone to Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin within the mountains, a seaside home within the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, Laguna Seashore, and most lately, Palm Springs. We work collectively, play collectively, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a workforce and firm. Each time we meet up, we depart refreshed, motivated, and excited for the yr forward collectively.

Up Your Recreation

We’re critical about serving to you enhance your craft. It’s crucial work of our managers, and we price range for it, too (hey-o!). Suppose conferences, on-line programs and subscriptions, devoted time away from work to study one thing new… It’s actually as much as you and your supervisor. However we like to see our folks rising.

Different Advantages

Our workforce is unfold everywhere in the world—largely in the US, but in addition within the UK, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and a number of other different international locations. Workforce members who dwell within the US or UK are arrange as workers, and people who dwell in different international locations set themselves up as unbiased contractors. Regardless of the place you reside, you’re eligible for our beneficiant paid household depart, trip, holidays, and sick time.

In case you’re within the US, we additionally provide implausible well being, dental, and imaginative and prescient insurance coverage, the place we cowl 100% of the premium for you and your loved ones. No must verify your imaginative and prescient, you learn that proper—100%. (Though for those who did must verify your imaginative and prescient, NBD, we’ve obtained you coated!) We even have a Conventional and Roth 401(okay) possibility, the place YNAB matches your contributions as much as six %, and matches vest instantly. (Are you a private finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He arrange YNAB’s 401k to have the bottom price construction potential, the place all plan prices are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The funding funds out there are implausible, passively-managed, extremely low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Belief us, it’s superior.) In case you’re within the UK, we additionally contribute six % to your pension.

Aggressive Compensation

At YNAB, we’re dedicated to equitable, market-driven, data-based compensation and we purpose to supply a aggressive advantages bundle to our workforce members. The beginning wage for this position might be between $130,000 – $180,000 USD yearly (with the highest of that vary reserved just for essentially the most skilled candidates). If we resolve to make you a proposal, we’ll decide essentially the most acceptable quantity based mostly on what we find out about your expertise and competency for the position, after which we’ll make you our greatest provide and hope that you simply settle for! In case you be a part of our workforce, you’ll even be eligible for a increase yearly and for our profit-share twice a yr. (YNAB wins, you win—that form of factor.)

A Few Ultimate Tidbits

When you begin, we DEMAND (in a pleasant, ALL CAPS IS YELLING manner) that you simply fill out your “Bucket Listing” spreadsheet with 50 gadgets. (That’s more durable than it sounds!)
We like to have fun with you whenever you full one thing in your bucket checklist—AND, we love utilizing your bucket checklist as inspiration in your finest birthday current(s) ever.
We wish you firing on all cylinders, so we’ll set you up with a shiny new laptop and change it each three years.
Did we point out that YNAB makes an enormous, optimistic distinction in folks’s lives? It’s possible you’ll not assume that issues a lot, however then just a few months down the highway you’ll understand it’s made your job actually, actually fulfilling. Don’t underestimate this one!

If this seems like your excellent surroundings, learn on as a result of now we need to discuss you, and the way you’ll play an enormous half in altering folks’s lives.

Now again to you, our new Director of Product….

As we talked about earlier, you’ll be accountable for offering organizational readability and informing actionable technique, whereas fostering a world-class product tradition and ensuring that everybody has an opportunity to execute. That’s it, huh? We imagine in you.

Let’s discuss our imaginative and prescient for every of these a little bit bit extra.

To supply organizational readability, you’ll:

Facilitate key communication and resolution making buildings within the product org.
Join features of imaginative and prescient to technique to concrete items of product work, throughout our product growth course of.
Present constant updates and suggestions on the execution of product work, utilizing metrics which are acceptable to our strategic objectives.
Evangelize the aim, success, challenges, and desires of the product throughout the corporate.

To tell actionable technique, you’ll:

Act as a accomplice and sounding board for the manager workforce, and our CEO Todd particularly, to develop a radical understanding of our technique and its implications.
Create and keep alternative roadmaps on the degree between firm technique and workforce problem-spaces.
Work with others to develop, talk, and make clear measures of success for our product, information us towards them, and construct collective accountability for reaching them.
Have plans and contingency plans for the long-term growth of the product past the quarter or the yr. Prioritize work based mostly on the long-term plan, together with what we need to emphasize sooner or later and what we’ll doubtless sundown.
Take possession and act the place empowered to, and hand-off the place you could.
Mine for battle, collaborate, and act as a sounding-board on product imaginative and prescient and technique.

To foster a world-class product tradition, you’ll:

Body our choices and actions within the context of key, enduring concepts.
Set up the buildings, practices, and expectations essential to do product properly. (Critically, that’s a complete job proper there.)
Present mentorship and training to direct stories and to particular person contributors all through the group.
Multiply the experience and fervour of others to assist them lead on essential features of product tradition.
Construct connections throughout the varied components of capital-p Product, from design to product administration, engineering, information science, product advertising and marketing, buyer assist, supply, and extra.
Facilitate the alternate of concepts in each formal and casual methods.
Preserve and enhance upon the options of our product course of which are distinctive to us.

To ensure everybody has the prospect to execute, you’ll:

Work most carefully with the product administration workforce for management, administration, and accountability.
Work with different purposeful leaders on useful resource allocation—at common cadences but in addition when the necessity arises off-cycle.
Work hand-in-hand with Rachel, our ProductOps Specialist, on routines and communication throughout the product org.
Use 1:1’s, retros, and different instruments to constantly mine for blockers, obstacles, and bottlenecks within the group. Oh, and clearly, clear them.
Devour standing updates extra persistently than anybody else within the firm (and all people is fairly good at this, so excessive bar!).
(Actually, to checklist the bullets right here is likely to be a step overboard. Product organizations are extremely complicated, which you already know, even once we’ve made and saved them so simple as could be.)

That’s a whopping twenty-two-and-a-half bullets, however let’s nonetheless say that your success as our Director of Product comes all the way down to your skill to method product growth as holistic, simultaneous, problem-solving of each person and enterprise objectives. You see the nuance in every little thing, but in addition convey readability out of it. You handle to empower and nurture the folks in our product group—whereas additionally offering a transparent and compelling route. As a result of (if we haven’t but spilled sufficient metaphorical ink on this concept) we work collaboratively right here from backside to high—not as a result of that’s good, however as a result of we see this as vital to our shared success. And within that, we all know you already know your stuff and might eloquently and logically clarify choices and, not for nothing, make them when the rubber hits the highway. Full cease.

Need fewer phrases for a abstract? You’re amazingly real and genuinely superb, and together with your assist and management, our product and product group might be with out peer.

Apply

Please apply at this hyperlink earlier than Sunday, September tenth at 11:59pm PST.

We’re excited to listen to from you!

P.S. In case you’re not on this place proper now, however know somebody who is likely to be, we’d admire you passing this alongside!