Content Design Director at Xero

Content Design Director

• REMOTE, US
• PRODUCT – DESIGN
• PERMANENT

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.

How You’ll Make an Impact…

The Content Design Director leads a group of passionate content designers that help craft experiences for our customers across multiple product interfaces. As a member of the design leadership team, this role will help shape the evolution of Xero’s design processes, and the integration of content with product development. The Content Design Director drives practices and initiatives that benefit the content team, product design team, product organization, and all of Xero.

The Content Design Director helps scale the impact of content design throughout the organization by transforming the way the team operates and influencing change. They serve as a senior partner working with GM, EGMs and C-suite executives, as well as internal cross-disciplinary teams, to ensure quality of relationship and product. They build strong relationships with all parts of the business to define viable approaches/methodologies, in line with relevant industry standards and best practices.

What you’ll do – Management and leadership…

• Manage a team of high-performing content designers
• Build and execute the long term strategy and vision for the team.
• Align your team to this vision and the overall strategy of Design, Product, and Xero.
• Allow your team to understand how their work contributes to Xero as a whole.
• Ensure your team are motivated, engaged, and learning.
• Ensure that they have clear growth plans that are discussed regularly.
• Provide regular feedback to help them grow by having straight up, honest and kind conversations.
• Cultivate a vibrant team culture within your team, Design Research, and Design. Demonstrate and encourage behaviors reflective of Xero’s (and the team’s) values.
• Manage resourcing and project allocation; Allocate the ‘right’ content designer to the right project, look for capacity breakdowns, and compromise with teams to make sure we’re doing the right work for Xero.

What you’ll do – Cross functional working…

• * Work closely with EGMs, GMs PMs, Directors and POs across design and product, to build trust and provide leadership in content and design.
  • Be instrumental in building a culture across Product and Xero that values the importance of the content in our product.
  • Be a senior voice of content design, both inside and outside of Xero, sharing its work, evangelizing its success, and articulating its vision.
  • Partner with content teams from across the organization to shape how we design content, and make guidance and support accessible to all employees.
  • Raise the visibility and understanding of the content design practice across the organization. Work with other design leaders to ensure content is well considered within the wider design process.

What You’ll do – Practice improvement…

• * Grow our content practices so that we’re always improving as a team.
  • Lead programmes of initiatives that make a significant difference to our team and the ways we work.
  • Encourage our team to look at our practice with a critical eye – collaborate with others to test ideas, share challenges, and build quality in our practice.

What you’ll bring…

The successful candidate will be experienced in leading a team of content designers, ideally in a product environment working on complex software. You will possess a wide range of experiences with content design, with excellent skills in collaborating across a range of stakeholders. You will be highly organized, passionate, pragmatic and empathetic, with an inclusive approach that aligns with our values and contributes to making Xero a great place to work. Under your thoughtful and effective leadership, your team will be able to continually challenge themselves, and grow in their expertise and their careers. This is an amazing opportunity to lead a thriving, productive and connected team of content designers. Take the next step with a progressive, innovative and global business.

About Xero?

Diversity of people brings diversity of thought, and we like that. A collaborative and inclusive environment is important to us. Working at Xero will provide you with a diverse and inclusive environment alongside people who will respect, challenge and support you to have fun while you do the best work of your life. We are a place where personal development, innovation, and well-being are not just inspired but celebrated.

We value our people and offer a wide range of compelling benefits and perks, including Xero shares. Xero’s collaborative culture is underscored by our values – #Ownership, #Challenge, #Beautiful, #Human and #Team – which empower us to understand and serve customers, attract top talent and continuously innovate. From the moment you step through our doors, you’ll feel welcome and supported to do the best work of your life.