Job Description

At Mechanical Orchard, we specialize in safely rewriting the most critical and complex business applications—the software that runs the world as we know it today—so they’re ready to adapt quickly and easily to market challenges and opportunities. Our approach emerged from observing the decades-long failure patterns in modernization efforts and is designed to eliminate the risks and disruptions that characterize most projects.

Our background in software development and the impact on the industry is well known: we've literally helped write the book on XP and other impactful Agile practices. We’re applying the same thoughtfulness and rigor in applying AI pragmatically where it helps. We believe in the durable principles behind Agile, and embrace the power of cross-functional teams, collective ownership, test driven development, short feedback loops, and continuous improvement.

We’re bringing joy to beleaguered IT teams everywhere. Together, we’re seeing how applying craft, expertise, and technologies we’re building can fundamentally transform the way companies operate, innovate, and win. Our values are: Do the right thing. Do what works. Be kind.

Designers at Mechanical Orchard modernize crucial applications that power the world’s largest companies. They balance long-term strategy with tactical delivery. They work as part of cross-functional teams to ensure that designs are efficient, effective, and cause minimal disruption to current users. They mitigate the risk of legacy modernization through incremental research and design that gets turned into working software from week one of a project. They apply a lean and iterative mindset to the complex and highly technical problems of long-term software modernization.

Designers at Mechanical Orchard are responsible for

Owning and running user research activities for their teams

Designing modern software from the ground up while taking into account the need for minimal changes from the legacy system

Understanding and balancing tradeoffs between business needs, user needs, technical limitations, and security constraints while maintaining sustainable pace

Using user-centered design principles to de-risk modernization work and craft great experiences as part of a balanced team

Maintaining tight feedback loops within the project team, with internal stakeholders, and with customer stakeholders

Establishing and maintaining excellent customer relationships, with alignment on priorities and progress

Contributing to the continuous improvement of our software delivery practice across the entire product lifecycle by applying and advocating for modern agile and design practices

Typical activities include

Conducting user research to understand the usage of existing legacy systems and validate that replacement systems are equivalent

Designing screens in Figma, sharing for feedback, and incorporating feedback from users, customers, and teammates (engineers and product managers)

Facilitating collaborative design workshops in all-remote, hybrid, and in-person settings

Working alongside engineers, as needed, to implement designs

Communicating with internal and external stakeholders about design strategy, risks, and techniques for modernization efficiently

Developing novel processes and tools for testing that modernized software is equivalent to its legacy counterpart and meets all performance requirements

Attending and facilitating agile team ceremonies such as daily standup, weekly planning, and weekly retrospectives

Contributing to front-end development, especially making and refining templates and components using HTML and Tailwind CSS (not required, but nice to have)

You may be asked to participate in your team’s 24/7 on-call rotation for incident response and management needs

Staff Product Designer - Mechanical Orchard

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