Product Designer

Location: Remote, New York City, or Oakland

Role Type: Full-time 

Compensation:  $115,000

Visa sponsorship: Not available

Hires remotely in: United States

Experience: 3+ years

Recidiviz is thrilled to be hiring a Product Designer to join our team! We’re a small, fast-moving group focused on reducing the amount of people in prison in the US. That’s where you come in. We’re looking for someone with a strong understanding of human-centered design to help us build a future where incarcerated people can successfully reintegrate back into their communities. Are you curious about what that work could look like? Here’s a case study.

About us

Recidiviz creates safer and healthier communities by improving outcomes for people in the criminal justice system. We do this by building technology that reduces the number of people in prison and helps criminal justice leaders embrace data-driven decision-making.

Thoughtfully designing our products, we’ve been able to safely reduce incarceration and improve outcomes with many of our partners. We work with leaders of the criminal justice system, people in prison (including probation and parole), and other organizations, in order to build a better path forward. In addition to the revenue we earn from our government partners, some of the most respected philanthropists and foundations support our work.

People who succeed at Recidiviz lead with kindness and humility while always assuming good intent. They are great listeners, strong problem solvers, and understand that failure is part of the journey to success. For us, part of that success requires working arm in arm with government staff to improve the system from within. People who succeed at Recidiviz understand the value of building empathy for the people we work with and the people who our mission serves, even when those two groups feel at odds.

About the role

As a Product Designer on our team, you’ll explore how seemingly simple interactions and interventions can have a meaningful impact on criminal justice outcomes. You’ll dive into ambiguous systemic problems and lead projects from research through ideation to bring new products to life.

You will also be expected to travel across the continental USA 1 or 2 times per quarter.

Core responsibilities

• Lead projects from end-to-end, including user research, requirement development, prototyping with engineering, and final implementation.
• Become an expert on the product’s users and their journeys in order to advocate and solve for their needs and pain points.
• Translate your insights into clear, actionable user-centered solutions that align with the product vision and the goals of the organization.
• Build systems, platforms, and tools that lead to meaningful user interactions and scale over time.
• Shape the design team’s operations as the product and organization continue to evolve.

Wild success

Here are a few things you might accomplish in your first year at Recidiviz that would demonstrate wild success in this role:

• Your knowledge of systems and HCI will have helped ship multiple contributions to our product.
• Your research and insights will have helped justice-involved people navigate out of the criminal justice system.
• Your proactiveness and teamwork will have advanced our product initiatives with several of our Department of Corrections partnerships.

Minimum qualifications

• Experience with field studies, participatory design, and heuristic evaluations
• Experience planning and leading interviews, group sessions, and synthesis sessions
• Ability to convey research insights and complex concepts to a diversity of audiences in simple terms 
• Ability to lead by example, treat partners with respect, and seek constructive feedback
• Comfortable switching between self-directed work and teamwork
• Highly collaborative across functions (engineers, data analysts, etc.)
• Fluent with Figma and other prototyping tools

Preferred qualifications

• Involved with or impacted by the criminal justice system
• Passionate about working with marginalized communities and tackling challenges related to poverty and inequity
• A lifelong learner, passionate about experimenting with new research methods and pushing their craft in new ways
• Deeply curious and highly attuned to human behavior and emotion
• Multidisciplinary

Compensation

Compensation is standardized based on roles and responsibilities. This ensures equitable compensation and responsible stewardship of our resources. As such, we do not negotiate compensation offers. 

The compensation for this role is: $115,000.

What we offer

• Effective, extremely thoughtful colleagues, working together on a mission that matters
• 90% medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for you and your dependents
• Flexible time off, including 20 days of PTO, 3 days of paid volunteering time, and 13 paid holidays
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• 401(k) retirement plan with 5% company match and no vesting period
• Complimentary One Medical membership (depending on location)
• Partnership with Carrot to provide employees with inclusive fertility and family-forming benefits, as well as a small but growing number of hormonal health and gender-affirming care benefits
• Monthly ClassPass credit for personal wellness
• Free mental health support via Talkspace
• Well-located offices in Oakland and Manhattan, with the flexibility to work remotely or go into either office as you choose
• An annual company offsite and other ad-hoc gatherings
• All the exhilarating challenges and stretch opportunities of a tech startup, combined with the mission-driven heart of a nonprofit

More about Recidiviz

Recidiviz was an all-volunteer effort until early 2019, when Clementine, Andrew, and Joshua founded the organization. Since then, we’ve built an A-team of software engineers, designers, product managers and domain experts, from companies like Google, Apple, Dropbox, Opower, and Sidewalk Labs. Recidiviz was part of Y-Combinator’s 2019 class and has received support from some of the most respected philanthropists and foundations, including Ford Foundation, Mackenzie Scott, Schmidt Futures, Arnold Ventures, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Mozilla Foundation.

Today, Recidiviz works with (and earns revenue from) over 15 state partners – big and small, red and blue – and covers more than 40% of the US incarcerated population. We have helped to get tens of thousands of people out of the criminal justice system, safely and equitably, and saved states nearly $1 billion. In the next five years, Recidiviz plans to partner with 40 states and help 250,000 people who are stuck in the system to get out and stay out. In addition to partnering with state Departments of Corrections, Recidiviz collaborates with and learns from partners – from organizations like the Correctional Leaders Association (CLA) to community based organizations and justice-impacted individuals, whose perspectives guide our work.

To learn more about how we do what we do, check out our 2023 Year in Review, read some press coverage, or watch our TED Talk. And if you’re really keen to see our work, you can dive into our Github :).

An important note

Lasting change is always built on diversity. Recidiviz recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, gender identity and all protected status as required by applicable law. We consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a special need that requires accommodation, please let us know in your application. Even if you don't think you meet all the criteria above, drop your resume, and we'll take a look – you might be great for another role or another time!