IDEO.org is out to design an end to poverty by bringing creativity, empathy, and innovation to the social sector. Our goal is to improve the lives of people in poor and vulnerable communities through design and we’re doing it in three ways: through the products, services, and experiences that we design; through the problem solvers we fuel; and by inspiring the social sector to adopt human-centered design.

IDEO.org is seeking a Senior Design Lead to join our Youth Reproductive Health program in San Francisco. As part of a multi-disciplinary design team, you’ll tackle complex, poverty-related challenges alongside thinkers and creators from different backgrounds. With frequent trips that will take you to Africa, you’ll lead a team of designers focused on turning human insights into tangible products, services, and consumer experiences. You’ll work closely with our partner organizations to ensure solutions are feasible, financially sustainable, and a strategic fit. You may have started your career as a Communications/Visual Designer, but by now, you’re fluent in the full design process—from research to strategy to implementation.

Craft is a given. Leadership experience is a must. Passion for solving challenges facing the world’s most impoverished communities is absolutely critical. You love to travel and are comfortable navigating the developing world. You are willing and able to travel internationally ~40% of the time.

Core Responsibilities:

Design

• Set the creative and strategic direction across design challenges: interaction, product, space and service design.
• Passionate about making, prototyping, and continually evolving products (physical & digital), systems, services, and businesses throughout their life cycle. 
• You’re cool with trial and error, and know that good design means getting scrappy, testing prototypes, and making revisions with those you’re designing for.
• You excel at turning human insights into concrete design concepts. 
• You’re solution-focused and medium-agnostic, willing to step out of your core skill set or discipline to find the correct solution to a challenge. 
• You’re a systems thinker, and can logically visualize complex systems.
• You can distinguish between “good” and “great” work, and clearly articulate the difference.

Team facing

• You’re a natural collaborator and a proven leader. You thrive leading and managing multidisciplinary teams.
• You’re at ease distilling business, customer, and partner constraints into digestible components for the broader design team. 
• You instill project teams with the confidence and discipline to explore innovative design solutions while respecting client deadlines.
• You believe the best design comes from healthy and happy teams. You build morale, offering emotional support in addition to design mentorship.
• You are comfortable managing administrative responsibilities such as budgets, time and expenses, etc. 
  

Partner facing

• You have deep empathy for our partners, their challenges, constraints, and needs. While you might not have a background in business or organizational design, you are able to work thoughtfully with our partners, always having an eye towards implementation, and designing with their capabilities in mind. 
• You can articulate the value of human-centered design through verbal and visual presentation.
• You’re a design evangelist, inspiring everyone around you to use the human-centered design approach to tackle their biggest challenges.
• You guide the delivery of a wide range of projects, partnering with the program and partnerships teams to define project scope, goals and deliverables in collaboration with key stakeholders.
• You cultivate relationships and liaise with key stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.

You have:

• A background in visual communications, with experience in service design preferred, and you have 6+ years of relevant work experience.
• Fluency in the human-centered design process from qualitative research and synthesis to ideation, prototyping, and implementation. 
• Experience leading a multi-disciplinary design team.
• Experience managing clients and partners—from early stage companies to mature organizations. 
• Experience creating quick and dirty prototypes as well as more refined deliverables.
• Competence with visual design tools, such as Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator.
• Experience or demonstrated interest in tackling poverty-related challenges.
• Cultural sensitivity, and an ability to connect easily with new people.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.