Strava

Senior Design Manager

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What Strava is looking for in applicants

About This Role

Strava is the leading social platform for athletes and the largest sports community in the world, with over 95 million athletes in 195 countries. If you sweat you’re an athlete, and Strava’s mobile apps and website connect millions of active people every day!

The Sr Design Manager is the catalyst of projects, to drive design excellence and partnership, ensuring that the team produces comprehensive creative in support of the seasonal strategy and long-term vision. They are experienced people managers who mentor designers and build opportunities for individual development, performance management, recognition, and rewards. Encouraging and leading innovative thinking, collaboration, and partnership.

We are looking for a Sr Design Manager to join our brand design team and help shape and direct not just our visual language and brand, but our people and the ways we design and create campaigns. As a Designer, you will be responsible for developing and growing our brand and marketing efforts in key markets - working closely with creative operations and country marketing teams. The role will be embedded with the European regional growth team to execute all subscription campaign initiatives (campaign and lifecycle experiments) but will keep close ties to central creative teams.

The Design team at Strava works closely with copywriters, marketers, product designers, researchers and engineers to create thoughtful, systematic, and beautiful brand design work. We collaborate and work across the company to balance the needs of athletes, the needs of our business, speed and technical constraints to create and maintain a cohesive experience across all touchpoints of Strava. Additionally, at times you’ll work with photographers, motion graphics experts, and external agencies to ensure our work is extraordinary. We appreciate designers who have a passion for details, think deeply, speak clearly, strive for impact, and embrace collaboration and feedback.

 

You’re excited about this opportunity because you will:

  • You will play a meaningful role in developing and leading work that is a mix of origination for specific European projects and extensions against global directives.

  • You will help set direction and manage internal and external multi-disciplinary teams of designers, narrators and producers to implement full end-to-end creative across channels.

  • You lead by example! You must strive under pressure but be positively and emotionally engaged.

  • You will partner closely with the production and operation teams to ensure that the creative is delivered on time and to the level of quality encouraged at Strava.

  • You are comfortable with ambiguity, thrive in a start up environment and enjoy shaping new processes and contributing to company culture.

 

You will be successful here by:

  • Instilling trust into the team: Gaining the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity.

  • Fostering effective teamwork: Building cohesive teams that apply their diverse skills & perspectives to achieve common goals

  • Developing Others: Developing People to meet both their career goals and the organisation goals.

  • Thinking strategically: Seeing ahead to future possibilities and translating them into breakthrough strategies and concepts that help steer the creative

  • Enthusiastically partnering and establishing strong working relationships with cross-functional teams

 

We’re excited about you because:

  • A minimum of 6+ years creative experience with a strong focus on consumer brands.

  • Great human and leadership skills that enable members to flourish in your team. This includes a proven ability to listen and empower the team rather than diminish it.

  • Clear, strategic and innovative thinking & solutions to any type of marketing and creative brief or problem.

  • Knowledge and sensitivity to creative trends influencing design in general, and in fashion/athletics specifically.

  • Experience of collaborating effectively with other functions, departments and external partners

  • Great sense of judgement and decision-making. Emotionally intelligent with a growth mindset.

 

What you’ll do

  • Develop compelling ideas and crafting those ideas into clear design solutions that inspire athletes to find their personal best

  • Present concepts and creative ideas to internal teams

  • Conceptualise and craft beautiful brand experiences that push Strava’s brand identity forward.

  • Work collaboratively with other designers (brand, product, production), copywriters, producers, marketers, project managers and engineers.

  • Manage and prioritise a workload of multiple projects from concept to completion

  • Evolve Strava’s visual identity across product, marketing and business channels.

  • Develop resources, guidelines and templates that empower teams to create beautiful and thoughtful brand expressions.

  • Inspire teams with your passion and drive to create the best work.

  • You will collaborate with other designers, copywriters, producers, project managers, engineers, marketers, and others to push the brand forward—maintaining visual brand excellence for a wide range of design needs.

  • Present and articulate the thinking behind your work to key stakeholders, leadership and team members.

 

What we’re looking for

  • 6+ years of experience with an end-to-end visual design background. You are a systems-thinker with the ability to translate athlete's needs into compelling design solutions—in and out of the product experience.

  • Excellent storyteller. You are an expert in bringing stories to life that are visually rich and are comfortable in pushing the medium.

  • Passion for developing standards and design systems that create huge impact through simple solutions.

  • Exceptional attention to detail. You are a master of craft, typography, composition, imagery, iconography and colour.

  • Strong editorial and art direction skills and experience to match. You have an eye for photography and film.

  • Enthusiasm for taking on new opportunities. You push the boundaries and are excited by a non-traditional approach to branding.

  • Talent for articulating ideas. You command the room when presenting your work to cross-functional teams and executives. You have excellent written, verbal and visual communication skills.

  • Experience working quickly and efficiently. You are keeping up with the pace in a lightning-fast startup environment.

  • Master of design tools. You are fluent with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Figma, After Effects

 

About Strava

Strava is Swedish for “strive,” which epitomises who we are and what we do. We’re a passionate and committed team, unified by our mission to connect athletes to what motivates them and help them find their personal best. And with billions of activity uploads from all over the world, we have a humbling and audacious vision: to be the record of the world’s athletic activities and the technology that makes every effort count.

Strava builds software that makes the best part of our athletes’ days even better. And just as we’re deeply committed to unlocking their potential, we’re dedicated to providing a world-class, inclusive workplace where our employees can grow and thrive, too. We’re backed by Sequoia Capital, Madrone Partners and Jackson Square Ventures, and we’re expanding in order to exceed the needs of our growing community of global athletes. Our culture reflects our community – we are continuously striving to hire and engage diverse teammates from all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives because we know we are a stronger team together.

In light of the global pandemic, Strava is currently working in a fully remote capacity. As always, we remain committed to fully supporting our employees, especially their mental health and wellbeing, through these challenging times. Despite challenges in the world around us, we are continuing to grow camaraderie and positivity within our culture, and we are unified in our commitment to becoming an antiracist company. We are differentiated by our truly people-first approach, our compassionate leadership, and our belief that we can bring joy and inspiration to athletes’ lives — now more than ever. All to say, it’s a great time to join Strava!

Strava is an equal opportunity employer. In keeping with the values of Strava, we make all employment decisions including hiring, evaluation, termination, promotional and training opportunities, without regard to race, religion, colour, sex, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, physical handicap, mental disability, medical condition, disability, gender or identity or expression, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, marital status, height and/or weight.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

California Consumer Protection Act Applicant Notice

For more information on compensation and benefits, please click here.

 

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What is Strava looking for?
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