Head of Design

We're Neon, a fast-growing, venture-backed startup revolutionizing the managed PostgreSQL database industry. Our platform enables organizations to deploy, scale, and manage PostgreSQL databases with unprecedented ease and reliability. We seek a Head of Design to lead Neon’s first brand redesign, level up our overall company design and image as well as manage a growing team.

The Opportunity

As Head of Design, you will use your impeccable taste to understand what elevates design in the modern tech world and what best resonates with engineers. Using your DevX knowledge and experience, you will assess the current design system and standards and determine the best way to move forward while bringing the stakeholders along for the ride.

Locations: Europe / Canada / US - Remote, West Coast early hours

You will:

• Help the team iterate from conceptual designs and ideas into feasible implementations that delight customers

• Level up all design output such that it aligns with the overall brand and identity of Neon, which you will be responsible for

• Manage a distributed team of three plus more over time

• Keep the interaction between design and eng at the forefront of your daily work

• You enjoy regularly rolling up your sleeves to create designs in Figma, low-fidelity mockups, and user journeys

• Use AI tools such as Devon to dive into Vibe Designing to make technical changes to  CSS/JavaScript and HTML code

• Drive design lead projects and initiatives, such as the design system and updated navigation of the console

• Develop and execute a design strategy for product design and expand over time to the company that elevates Neon’s brand as a world-class, designed developer toolset

• Use our existing UX research systems and find new ways to connect with customers to gather feedback on your designs

What You Bring:

• 8+ years of experience in design

• 5+ yrs of experience managing direct reports in a distributed environment

• Experience building out a successful design system for a developer experience product  

• You have good taste, you know what a great developer experience is when you see and can deliver that in a consistent manner

• Drive velocity in our design function, knowing that making good decisions quickly matters most

• Proven track record of crafting design systems and simplifying designs into organized components

• Understanding developer workflows, devops cycle: dev, test, preview, staging and some knowledge of how databases fit into that

• Experience working remotely

• Design work you can share for review

Bonus Experience

• Ability to write some SQL or know ORM code

• Experience working in a database, backend, or technical startups

• Understanding git branching

• Experience working on a product with CLI and API

• Experience with Devon

• Portfolio ready for review

Neon is building open-source cloud-native PostgreSQL. Our architecture separates storage from compute, allowing for stateless and serverless Postgres. We're a well-funded startup with deep knowledge of Postgres internals and decades of experience building databases. We are a systems company; we work on low-level code with strict performance and correctness requirements.

Neon was created by a team of Postgres hackers and led by CEO Nikita Shamgunov (co-founder of SingleStore). Neon is built on open-source principles and is focused on giving back to the Postgres and developer communities.

• We are a distributed team of 130+ people working from 25+ countries (concentrating around North American and European time zones)

• We are a team built on open-source cultural principles (transparency, contribution, accountability, and proactivity)

• Team with decades of experience building databases and deep knowledge of Postgres internals. We are deeply technical.

• We have experienced Postgres committers and hackers on the team (check Heikki, Anastasia, Matthias profiles)

• We believe in the efficacy of collaborative open-source

• We aim for a diversity of thoughts and backgrounds

• We are keen to be a fast-moving, flat org and avoid hierarchical structures

Top-tier investors backed up Neon's vision:

• We raised $104 million in funding from Menlo Ventures, Notable Capital, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, and Founders Fund.

  1. Venture vehicles of Snowflake and Databricks invested in Neon.

  2. Our angel investors are prominent technologists and ecosystem players. More than 20 awesome angels supported Neon, including Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, Mike Ovitz, Ajeet Singh, Guillermo Rauch, Søren Brammer Schmidt, and Wes McKinney.

  3. Our Board includes Quentin Clark, Glenn Solomon, Joe Morrissey, and Tim Tully.

• You have an opportunity to be an early employee in the fast-scaling ambitious team

• You can work 100% remote: we'll handle all formalities to arrange work from your home

• We grant equity (stock options) for all full-time hires

• We offer a competitive benefits package in line with all tech companies (top-notch equipment, unlimited vacations, paid parental leaves, and much more)

• We are distributed, yet make our bonds during regular offsites (the last one was in Lisbon, Portugal)