Service Designer at Deep Consulting Solutions

The main function of the Service Designer position is to design complex functional business applications and is primarily concerned with functional logic and processes. The job is full time remote with freely set schedule and you can do it from anywhere in the world.

Skill Based

• Ability to thoroughly understand of how a given piece of software works functionally - understanding how software solutions functionally operate and being able to break down the various processes involved in the functionality of a given piece of software is essential for being able to create workable solutions that follow a defined logic. Technical background can help here but is not required, however strong logical reasoning is essential.

• Ability to properly define software features and other functional requirements - an essential component of the job is to define functionalities of the software and being able to define them properly and correctly is a necessary skill.

• Good understanding of what an acceptable User Experience is in the given context and ability to implement it in the interactions with users - software solutions we make interact with a lot of different users (company staff, clients, partners, vendors, etc.) and it is essential to make sure that the user experience during the interaction is acceptable for the given situation (note that we say "acceptable" not "perfect" - in many contexts perfect or extremely beautiful user experience isn't necessarily required in each interaction, at minimum the software solution's user must at all times be clearly informed of what the situation is and what they are supposed to in the business process or what is needed from them, however in some interaction settings (such as customer portals for example) higher UX standard is expected with a higher need for visual cleanliness and appeal).

• Attention to the smallest details and ability to break everything down to smallest pieces and steps - details are critical in this business as there are many fine business requirements that need to be considered and many functional parts that need to be incorporated into a software solution. A person doing this job needs to be able to keep track of small details and effectively combine small details to make big functional solutions that can meet all of the various small requirements.

• Good documentation skill - since everything produced by the Service Designer is then used by the engineering team as functional designs for the solution and effectively as its production blueprint, it is absolutely essential that the person doing this job be able to document designs effectively and deliver them in an easily understandable and easy to break down process.

You can see the detailed job posting and apply if you wish at this link:

https://zfrmz.com/hCqEwdQBRf9MeJB1NcGc?src=irina

~~~~~FAQ~~~~~

Q: Are specific UI Skills Required for this job?

A: Not really. The UI making, as mentioned above, has been delegated to dedicated UI Designer. The Product Designer will review the UI made by the UI Designer, so an understanding of what makes a good UI is needed, but the Product Designer won't be making UI in this job, except for perhaps exceptional small occurrences where small and basic UI piece is needed and no UI Designer resource is available - but in such case no high fidelity UI will be necessary.

Q: Does the job involve meeting clients?

A: No (with very small exceptions). As mentioned in the Delivery Process section, the business analysts carry out all the requirements formulation that is done based upon their study of the client business and generally it is the business analyst who plans the implementations and coordinates most client related engagements regarding the project (with the rest being done by DCS Owner). The Product Designer is thus free to focus on the making of the solution and doesn't get distracted by client engagement or changing requirements (as all requirements are clear upfront). The only rare case when a Product Designer may participate in a client meeting is when presenting a design to the client to get feedback (which is what we do in some projects before passing designs to engineering team, although by far not in all of them as usually the business requirements and processes are clear enough and there is no need for soliciting design feedback from clients and thus no need to spend time on this) - in this rare case the interaction with the client will be led either by the business analyst or DCS Owner, and the Product Designer will be one of the participants of the meeting and will act as an expert of the matters of the solution designed.

Q: Do Leadership Opportunities exist in this job?

A: Yes. While this job posting isn't directly hiring for a manager or a head of department, if a person who gets hired for the job proves him/herself at the first project(s) and shows a high degree of competence and ability to execute, then it will be well in the company's interest to promote the person to a head of design team role and give management responsibilities - this could happen potentially as soon as a couple of months into the job. At the moment the business owner is personally managing the design team and would really like to be able to trust somebody else with this job so that the owner can spend more time on marketing, sales and business expansion - however, before this becomes an option, you will need to show your ability to deliver on the project. The business is also quite new and anticipates fast growth in number of projects and will be needing to expand the operation's capacity.

Q: Is there a mentor available?

A: Yes. While we generally look for people who are competent and capable of delivering, we do understand that even strong candidates may require a bit of up-skilling and help, and we do have a person with extensive and long experience and deep expertise who helped develop our design process and who now works in our company part time and does provide mentoring and review to our product designers. Our expectation, however, is that this mentoring can only serve a supporting role in the person's development. We expect that you will lead your own development and push yourself to learn and do your own research and practice, while the mentoring from our senior expert will only be there as a supporting force to that - in other words we don't expect to have to micromanage your learning, but we will give guidance and we will set goals. We also have already conducted several recorded sessions and packaged these recordings into an introductory package that explains our design process and approach which we will be giving you to watch if you get hired.

Q: What growth opportunities are available?

A: There are many. Which ones you will get will depend on you. As already mentioned above, there is a potential for leadership opportunities, but there are also opportunities to become subject matter experts in certain things - specifically as we use different software platforms every project will allow you to learn platforms used in it and eventually you can become a strong expert in a platform or set of platforms and then be able to make platform decisions yourself and as result be a very quick and effective producer here (which will be rewarded with additional bonuses or raises). Also we are working with certain industries, so you could become an expert in certain industry and solutions for issues in it - for example healthcare (one of our focus industries) has some very particular considerations to make about the handling of patient records and there are quite a lot of commonalities regarding them across various healthcare businesses. Our company's business plan is to grow in our niches, so if you develop specific expertise in specific niche(s) and use this expertise to allow us to serve more clients well then this will be very valuable to the company (and duly rewarded). Also, this is a very flat organizational structure, so if you come up with some suggestions to improve the business operation, the business owner will be very willing to listen to you and take points to consideration and implement them - and if you have meaningful suggestions you will be empowered to implement them and if they work successfully you will be reciprocated.

Q: Will there be Opportunities to create SaaS products?

A: Yes, sort of. As already mentioned, the company does have reusable components on top of which we add custom developments and create end client solutions - this is something we already make and our product designers are involved in designing them - the particularly interesting part of designing them is figuring out how to properly separate and generalize functionality in a way that it will be possible to later connect inputs/outputs of the reusable component to the custom solutions that will be made in such a way that this will be successful and will allow to meet future requirements. A more long term plan for the company is to actually create standalone product offerings which could be either standalone products or extensions for platforms like for example Zoho CRM that could either be used on their own as is or have a customized setup added on top of them - these products would allow to solve specific business problems in industries that our company serves - in fact, there is currently one niche solution that we are considering to turn into a product like that, but we will only share the specifics of that after entering into a comprehensive Non Disclosure Agreement with you. We do plan on involving the more competent and proven Product Designers in this process, so if you show that you are reliable and capable of delivering, you'll have an opportunity to participate in this.

Q: If everyone is remote and all over the planet, how are meetings arranged?

A: So far we haven't had any problems coordinating with everybody's schedules to get the project done. We do not have large corporate meetings going on every day (which are almost always useless in companies that have them), and the only structured meeting that the Product Designers attend is a meeting that is held twice a week on Monday and Friday to coordinate the actions of the design team and the engineering team and check in on open issues. Outside of that, the only meetings that exist for Product Designers are those that arise ad-hoc for project specific needs when something needs to be discussed or clarified and cannot be resolved through text chat or comments and those are set whenever people who need to meet agree to meet. Most communication is handled through written channels and it works very well for everyone.

https://zfrmz.com/Fy5S2dgcxRDUGtnel0Hw?src=irina