Product Designer

Page Facing Up Summary

Build a product that people love
Gather user requirements
Gather user feedback
Develop wireframes
Web & Mobile
3+ years experience
1 day a week in Kings Cross, London

Owl About Birda

Our purpose is to help people experience the natural world so that they'll fight to protect it. We are building a birding app for anyone who is curious about the living world. Enabling people to record and share their birding experiences so that they can motivate themselves and others to spend more time outside.

Think 'Strava for Birdwatching'. Even in 2021, a birder's main field tool is a notebook. We know we can do better than that. We are building an app that will enhance the humble notebook by digitally logging bird sightings (in the field or at home), adding GPS-enabled mapping, gamified challenges and social features too. Like 'Pokemon Go' but with birds, in real life.

We've been going 6 months and have our MVP being tested in a private beta program with a public launch pencilled in for late autumn. We move quickly but take a great deal of care and responsibility in what we do, quality matters to us and so does our users' data security.

Telescope What we are looking for


We've bootstrapped our product designs using off the shelf UI kits and that's been great, but now it's time to get a professional in. We need help to continue to develop our app, incorporating user feedback, app analytics and other data sources. It'll be for you to take this data and turn them into designs for the engineers to build.

You'll be the only UX professional on the team for a while, so you need to be experienced enough to work independently. You'll be working closely with Natalie, co-founder and Head of Design (she's got a print and aesthetic design background) and Dom, co-founder and CTO (he also mostly wears the product owner hat too).

You get to choose your own adventure career wise, want to stay design focused? No problem. Want to move into more of a product owner role? Help yourself!

You are good at your job and care about the quality of your work. If you have an interest in conservation and nature then you'll find the project right up your street.

Dollar Banknote / Green Heart What we give in return

Purpose - Your life is too precious to spend it making something that doesn't matter. Many of the greatest challenges that all humans will face both now and in the future will involve managing climate change. Encouraging an appreciation of the natural world is a small but vital part of rising to these challenges. We believe that getting people excited about the plants and animals that inhabit our planet will lead to people making different decisions about how they lead their lives.

Money - Of course, you can't pay your rent / mortgage / deliveroo habit on good feelings so we'll be paying a respectable salary. We won't be able to compete with banks or large tech companies though, so our mission will need to matter to you.

Stock - We have an employee-friendly (gradual vesting, long exercise period) stock options grant. If you stick with us, you'll share in any success we achieve. It's still very early days for us which means that the amount of equity on offer will be meaningful - it's your baby too.

Flexible working - if you need to bail early to make the school run, that's not a problem. Work when you are productive. For Dom that's 6.00 in the morning but he's weird Face with Rolling Eyes.

Other stuff - There's all the usual holiday (we'll make you take it too) and equipment stuff too. Although not every startup has loaner DSLR's Winking Face.

👩🏽‍💼 Interview Process

While there are a few stages, we'll move as quickly as you can. Nobody likes an interview process that takes months.

👋🏻 Step 1 - Say hi to Birda

20 minute informal introduction with John our Founder and CEO. Find out if you think it's worth going through the hassle of the rest of the process...

House Step 2a - Take home design thing

We'll send you some information on a real design problem that we have. You should spend some time thinking about it and come up with some solutions and perhaps some materials (sketches, notes, whatever your process is) to bring along to the next step. Don't go crazy though, an hour or so will do.

Briefcase Step 2b - On site interview

This will be at our office in Kings Cross, London. You'll be speaking with Natalie and John and should allow for 2 hours. Don't worry we'll bring snacks!
There'll be 3 sections:
Talk about your experience
Chat through your ideas for what we should do about our design problem. This is for all of us to get an idea for what it's like to work together
Your turn to interview us, ask as anything and don't hold back. Have some concerns? Nows the time to raise them. It's a big decision and we want to take every opportunity to ensure it's the right one for everybody.

Clapper Board Next Steps

If this sounds like a project you're interested in then please say hi, ideally with a portfolio or some other things that you have made.
+44 7825325575

🖥 Tech Stack (in case you're interested)