Head of Design

Who are we?

At Gradle Inc. our purpose is to bring joy to software builders and value to the business professionals that use it. We are the company behind the Gradle Build Tool, which is one of the top 20 Most Popular Open Source Projects for IT, used by millions of developers, and is downloaded almost 30 million times a month. Our commercial product, Gradle Enterprise, is used by some of the most elite development teams within the most valuable technology and G1000 brands. We achieved our Series C funding in December of 2021 and are moving into a period of rapid growth.

Gradle is one of the original remote-first organizations -  we were founded back in 2008 by two engineers living on opposite sides of the world. Today, the Gradle workforce includes employees in 27 countries and 5 continents.

Ensuring a diverse and inclusive environment where we learn from each other is important to our values and culture. We welcome all people of diverse backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives!

Why this role?

Gradle has a distinctive visual brand that has contributed immensely to the success of the company. We have a world-class design style and design language that was established early with the launch of Gradle Enterprise and gradle.com.  We are looking for a Head of Design to revitalize the Gradle visual brand, evolve it as necessary,  and make it once again, a world class element and driving force of our company’s success. 

You may be a good fit if you:

• Have the ability to create/evolve a visual brand vision, and design style and language and drive it across all company and customer-facing visual assets.
• Are experienced building a team (PT/virtual and/or inhouse) as necessary to execute the plan (e.g. on a tactical project-based basis). This can range from designing video assets, web/landing pages, and event booths/signage, to icon collections, YouTube video thumbnails, and banner ad graphics. 
• Are able to explain and simplify complex/technical concepts through creative use of  visual media and evoke the intended emotional response (e.g. empathizing, inspiring, convincing, etc.).
• Create design standards and templates for all marketing and sales collateral and tools, including product data sheets, white papers, slide presentations, social media posts, email campaigns, signage, etc.
• In some cases, propose and create and or consult on complete web page and document layouts.
• Understand, adhere to, enforce, and extend as necessary, existing branding guidelines (e.g. logo usage, color template, quality standards). 
• Deliver all “actionable” assets to front-end web developers for implementation or other asset owner as appropriate.
• Consult on miscellaneous brand-consistency related questions, especially stakeholders of non-visual brand elements.

Skills you’ll bring:

• An elite background in design and branding principles and techniques through formal education and/or deep professional experience is preferred.
• Gradle marketing does not have any tool preferences (e.g. Adobe Illustrator), except we are standardizing on Figma for its ease of collaboration for those that want to review designs, but not necessarily create them. 
• ASCII Doctor experience is a plus. 
• West coast time zone preferred. 

Important Information

For an early-stage startup, Gradle has invested heavily in its brand as exhibited in all customer-facing marketing and sales assets. This includes original, intricate, and deeply thought through images and evocative/symbolic designs. The candidate must be able to carry forward the distinct Gradle style and maintain the same level of quality.  This involves the ability to mimic this design style.

About Us

We are committed and skilled software engineers, product designers, and marketing experts who are passionate about developer productivity. We take pride in delivering products that are relied upon daily by some of the world's leading software organizations, such as Netflix, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Spotify, Twitter, and Atlassian.

Our team is globally distributed but deeply connected. We value our interpersonal relationships as much as we value our achievements. We are a diverse and inclusive workplace where we learn from each other and together. We welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives.

Visit our careers page to learn more about the company and see other open positions. Visit Glassdoor to read what current and former Gradle employees have to say about the company.