Product Designer

Forward Networks is revolutionizing the way large networks are managed. The Forward Enterprise platform delivers a vendor-agnostic "digital twin" of the network, based on a mathematical model. The platform scales to support hundreds of thousands of network devices, whether cloud, hybrid cloud, or on-prem. It serves as a single source of truth for the network, enabling network operators to instantly verify security posture, accelerate troubleshooting, avoid outages, and modernize network management.

Over the past few years, Forward Networks has received tremendous industry recognition, including “Cool Vendor in Enterprise Networking” by Gartner, “Product of the Year” by Cloud Computing, “Hot Company” by Cyber Defense Magazine, “Enterprise Cloud Computing Software of the Year,” and has been named to Fortune’s “Best Workplaces in the Bay Area” list.

The company was founded by four Stanford PhD graduates who saw a massive opportunity to improve network operations. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, MSD Capital, Threshold Ventures, and Goldman Sachs.

Forward Networks is currently looking for a user-centered Mid-Level Product Designer with an entrepreneurial mindset to contribute to our growth and elevate our user experience to the next level.
Description:
Our flagship product, Forward Enterprise, is a web application that brings a consumer-like design approach to interacting with network behavior data. We are looking for someone who loves UX, from user research via fast-paced prototyping, through information architecture and intuitive interface design, to bringing the design to the final product.  You’ll be responsible for translating requirements from Product Management into elegant user experiences that our engineers can implement. You will leverage the full range of your design skills, including user research, interaction design, and visual design. You’ll work closely with our Product and Engineering teams to build new features from our product roadmap, and improve existing features, based on user feedback and competitive analysis, using various design and prototyping tools.
Responsibilities:

• Design experiences that satisfy our customers’ requirements
• Continually ensure that UX goals are aligned with the broader business goals
• Distill complex network engineering problems and use cases into intuitive and compelling interactive experiences that engage our users
• Conduct customer and user research, including interviews, surveys, concept testing and usability studies
• Create customer journeys, conceptual diagrams, wireframes, and prototypes
• Collaborate with Product Management and Engineering to ensure business and technical needs are met, while maintaining a strong focus on the user experience
• Define, track, and analyze metrics that are used to make measurable improvements to the product

Requirements:

• Four (4) or more years of experience in user research, product design, user experience design, interaction design, information architecture, or a similar role
• The ability to solve complex design problems that require alignment with a wide array of stakeholders (Product Management, Sales, Engineering, Customer Success)
• Ability to explore widely different ideas and narrow them down based on user insights
• Expert in UX design processes and methods
• Ability to work within an established design system, but comfortable pushing the framework to its limits
• Solid understanding of research methodology, capturing insights, and applying empathy to the product design process
• Experience with designing highly interactive web or desktop applications
• Mastery in design tools like Figma or Sketch
• A portfolio and samples of work demonstrating a background creating great user-centered, customer-focused design solutions
• Strong verbal communication and presentation skills
• Bachelor’s degree in UX Design, Visual / Graphic Design, Human Computer Interaction, Human Factors, or related field of study

Nice to have:

• Experience with implementing ADA/WCAG-compliant designs
• Experience working in the network/IT infrastructure space
• Experience working on enterprise (B2B) products

The base pay range for this role is between $130,000 and $140,000. Base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location