Job Opening: Senior Product Designer

Full-time. Remote.

Who we are

Tuple is an app for remote pair programming available on macOS and Linux

We (Ben, Spencer, and Joel) founded the company four years ago because we disliked pairing over Slack and Zoom. We believed that by focusing on remote pairing exclusively, we could create a tool that developers would actually like.

Turns out we were right! We've grown to millions in revenue and tens of thousands of paid users in four years without any outside funding. Our product is used by the savvy engineers at companies like Shopify, Stripe, Spotify, and Netflix.

(Want the latest on how things are going? Ben hosts a weekly podcast where he shares regular updates.)

Role overview

For the sake of simplicity, imagine shipping a new feature consists of only three steps:

1. Determining the most important problem to solve.
2. Figuring out in broad strokes how we'll solve it.
3. Getting the UI/UX just right.

Today, we need the most help with step three, some help step two, and the least with step one.

Step one is generally handled by our CEO Ben, who owns the product roadmap.

Ben will also tend to provide significant guidance (aka "sometimes annoyingly-specific opinions") on the second step. This could range from a broad-strokes description to a shaped pitch.

Much of your initial work will consist of taking this step-two guidance and turning it into high-fidelity designs for our engineers to implement.

As an example, you'll frequently be answering questions like "We know we want a button, and we know what happens when you click it, but where do we put it? What does it look like? What's the label? Should it have an icon? Does it need to micro-copy to explain common questions? Should it always be displayed or only when X is true?"

As the feature gets implemented, you'll make decisions on questions that come up, improvise clever workarounds when we hit technical roadblocks, and ensure we ship something that achieves the broad-strokes goal.

Along the way, you will be an absolute stickler about getting the details right at many levels of abstraction:

• "Shouldn't we use title case like we did elsewhere?"
• "If we put this element here, it will make it seem like it's related to this one. Is that what we want?"
• "Are we calling this thing something our users will recognize?"
• "This treatment makes this element seem more important than that one. Is that what we want?"
• "Can we avoid this complexity entirely if we do X instead?"

As you get to know our product and users and demonstrate your competence through shipped work, you can expect to own more of the second step described above. Eventually, we'd love to have you contribute substantially to the entire process, though it's likely that Ben will continue to make the final calls on the product roadmap for some time to come.

Things you'll do a lot

• Talk to users. You'll show them early mocks of things we're working on and iterate based on their feedback. After we ship something, you'll follow up and make sure we nailed it.
• Design the UI for new features going in the Tuple macOS and Linux clients.
• Keep a steady pipeline of high-fidelity mocks/designed features for engineers to implement.
• Collaborate with our devs as your changes are implemented and on-the-fly decisions are needed.

Things you must do well

• Maintain a high bar for product polish.
• Learn the macOS and Linux design languages.
• See projects through.
• Ideally, but not a deal-breaker: write HTML/CSS.

Projects you’re likely to work on

• Making Tuple's remote control model more intuitive.
• Reducing the frequency at which we're asked for features we already have 🤦🏻‍♂️.
• Figuring out how to give 3+ people remote control of a computer without everyone losing their sanity.
• Designing a landing page for a new feature or marketing initiative.

Things you won't have to do

• Work without feedback and input from others.
• Ask permission to try interesting projects.
• Work nine to five.

Why you might want to work with us

• We're tiny, so there are no layers of bureaucracy to work through. You can have a huge impact here.
• We rarely have meetings and are very flexible on work schedules.
• You can work remotely as long as you're within 5 hours of Boston's time zone (EST).
• You'll report to our CEO, Ben.

Why you might not want to work with us

• We're new at this. We're learning how to run a company, and are bound to make mistakes. We want you to tell us when we do, though!
• We hire slowly, so you won't have 5 people reporting to you in a year like you might at a hyper-growth startup.
• You're likely to be our only designer for a while.
• You'll report to our CEO, Ben.

Salary

$175k

How to apply

Please try our macOS app and suggest a UX improvement you think would most improve the product. (Please refrain from commenting on small visual details like contrast or colors. We know there's lot of low-hanging fruit there (and we'll get to it) but it doesn't reveal much about your abilities.) Email your thoughts (and links to your best work) to jobs+designer@tuple.app.

Thanks!