Lead Data Engineer

What are we working on at Rise Science?nnThe short answer: we exist to give all people the energy to make the most of life.nnOur current product, RISE, is mobile app designed to help everyone with a phone master their energy. Were in the business of giving our customers energy. When we stay focused on that need, customers are happy.nnnIt turns out that the biggest determinant of your energy levels is your sleep. However, the tools available today are focused on speciality niches. Some are trying to help you fall asleep (like Calm) and others measure every physiological asepct your sleep (like Fitbit, Whoop, & Oura). While those businesses have executed very well theyre relevant for maybe ~15% of the population.nnWeve always believed theres a significantly larger opportunity for impact by focusing on what the vast majority of us want: more energy. We all want more energy. Just last year, consumers spent a trillion dollars on caffeine alone. A trillion dollars on a drug that gives us a short-high. We believe people want real energy. We believe that people are changing how they view their health and turning to much healthier, scientifically sound solutions.nnWhen youre squarely focused on the need for more energy you design a much different solution than what exists. Rather than helping you fall asleep or track your sleep with hardware, our app uses behavioral data from phone to analyze how much sleep debt you have and your circadian rhythm so you can forecast exactly how much energy youll have during the day and manage your energy.nnIt allows for some powerful use-cases: nn* when your morning grogginess will endn* when to stop drinking caffeinen* when to exercisen* when youll be most productiven* when to eat lunchn* when to stop work and start watching Netflixn* and the best time to be sleepingnnIts taken a decade of rigorous work and research to get here. Weve invested millions of dollars (from the investors behind Peloton, Fitbit, Spotify, Facebook, and Twitter) and have millions of nights of data from 1m+ users – from high schoolers to pro athletes, working parents to retirees – to design and build scientifically robust algorithms to help people live the best lives possible.nnIf you want to see it for yourself, start a free trial.nnYour challenge is helping more people have confidence to give Rise a try.nIn 2021 we had 1 million people install RISE. 200k started a trial. Your job is to ultimately increase the percent of folks who install that start a trial with us. To do that, youll need to help our new installers to feel incredibly confident RISE will help them take control of their sleep and energy.nnDoing this well wont be one of those jobs you can coast and get by. Youll need to be ready to build. But if you put 8 hours a day of solid work, and youre the right fit, youll directly improve the lives of millions of people in 2022.nnHeres why you might not be a fit:nnWeve learned our day to day environment is unique. If you feel super confident about these three areas, we should talk. If not, you wont find success in the role:nn* Customer problems start out fuzzy. About ~50% of the time there arent clear patterns in similar products. If youre not an expert in collaborating with engineers and PMs to go from fuzzy to clear testable solution youll spin your wheels and will feel unproductive.nn* Youll need to design polished consumer experiences quickly, without a well established, robust design system. If youre more comfortable moving fast when working from a well established, robust design system youre going to struggle in this role. If you cant expertly and quickly build your own sensible patterns and components for native mobile, youll feel behind. The impact to the business is that visual and interaction issues will show up clearly in the quant data which slows down progress.nn* The area of sleep and human energy is complex. If you arent naturally relentless in teaching yourself, going deep on problems, digging into peer-reviewed research and books, youll struggle to develop useful and novel solutions. We expect our product teams to become the subject matter experts. We dont lean on a board of advisors or internal sleep scientists to make day to day product decisions.nnCompany culture and stagenn* Mediocre performance results in generous severance. At our size, we can only afford to keep our highly effective people. The upside of this is that youre working with others who are performing at a really high level.nn* We encourage the people making, to make the decisions. Our core philosophy is that we value great people over process and we trust you to make informed decisions.nn* Progress and growth every day matters. If you struggle to unblock yourself quickly when youre stuck, ask for help, receive constructive feedback, or arent extraordinarily candid, you should consider another company.nn* We are building a product together. Product, design, engineering all sit at the same table, and we are all listening to the user. If you dont find yourself inspired by non-designers or its difficult for you to let go of your idea, youre not going to be happy here.n* We dont have all the answers. If you dont enjoy being in the uncomfortable space of not knowing and figuring out how to learn the answer, this isnt for you.nn* We avoid rules and believe in people over process. If you do your best work in a process-driven, rules-based environment and get uncomfortable that we rely on good judgement, you wont be happy at Rise.nnYoull have every resource you need to do your best work.nnYoull be part of a dedicated empowered team thats focused on the same problem you are. That means you can maximize your time focusing on discovering the right problems to solve. And then solve it well. No other fluff. You and Kellie own the strategy and have the engineering resources to build and learn quickly. Heres a quick run-down of who youre working with:nn1. Kellie runs product management. Shell be your partner on end-to-end shipping: strategy, customer discovery, solutions & analytics. Before Rise, Kellie was a psychology researcher in stress and emotions and led mobile app growth at Wayfair.nn2. Greg leads backend and decided to end his PhD in cell biology to write software. Working at a science-based company is his dream job.nn3. Graham leads front-end. Before falling in love with front-end, he produced gangster rap beats.nnYoull have data to learn incredibly quickly. Weve instrumented our whole product for doing high quality research. Need 5 people that installed but didnt start a trial to test a prototype? We can get them on zoom in 24 hours. Youll also know how your solutions impacted customer behavior. We ship every new feature as a randomized controlled trial. This means you can see how your solution is working leading to much better and faster iterations. Lastly, youre not starting from scratch. We know quite a bit about who these customers are and why theyre not starting trials.nnDesign works well at Rise. Jason, who heads our design function, has been designing interfaces professionally since 1998. He was at Rise in 2018 when it was bunch of ideas cobbled together and his work has enabled us to go from 0 to 1m+ installs last year. Hes an expert. A rare breed that has done it all. Leading big teams, being the principal designer, deep in product, deep in marketing. You get the idea. Youll get to learn directly with him. This means theres no problem youll run into that he wont be able to guide you through. Youll find hes selfless, low ego and kind.nnHere are the cultural reasons we love working at Rise:nn1. Youll do work most days that will directly improve peoples lives. Each pixel you move, every word you type, will help more people feel better and be more productive. Each member of the team shares this daily mission. What you do each day directly contributes to the worlds health, happiness, productivity, and longevity. Youll talk regularly with people whose lives youve changed.nn2. Youll work with a team where human-centered design is the center of how we develop our product and business. IDEO was our first investor and I did my Masters in Don Normans human-centered design program.nn3. Youll collaborate with Jason, who heads design, to continue the work of developing an effective and efficient design system for use across marketing and product. As a design team of two, youll shape the practice at Rise Science.nn4. One of our core values is growth. That means every week; well talk about how we can help you grow. What skills, experiences, people can help you get to your next career goal. For this role to be successful, it has to be a great big step in the right direction for your career, not just a job.nn5. If entrepreneurship is interesting to you, youll also have a front-row seat to all the company buildings ups and downs. Your work will be in front of some of the top consumer health investors and operators that backed and worked at teams at companies like Fitbit and Peloton.nn6. More than anything else, we realize that life is short. So even though were solving an unthinkably large problem, taking time for yourself and your family is essential. Without it, we dont believe you can live your best life and do your lifes work. And of course, well get your sleep in order. nnFAQsn1. Who will I report to?nYoull technically report to me. Ill have hiring and firing decisions.nJason is the design functional lead. Hes responsible for coaching you on how to be successful at Rise, evolving our design culture, and if a tie-breaker is needed, making the final call on a conflicting decision.nn2. Why isnt Jason hiring for this role since hes head of design?nCompany building is a team sport. Jason has critical product opportunities hes focused on and my job is maximizing his focus on that. Hell be playing a key decision role in the interview process and of course someone youd want to work with.nn3. What seniority is needed for the role?nLanguage around seniority is misleading. So whats most important is that when you read what would disqualify you, you can point to evidence of how youd do well in our environment. Years of experience also isnt a great metric. Jason has been doing this for 23 years. But if youve got 5 and you have the talent, this could be a great opportunity.nn4. What are the career growth paths?nIt really depends on what you want which is something Ill work with you on. When we all do our jobs really well, it creates more opportunity for more talented people to come on board.nn5. Compensation?nWe know great talent deserves to get paid well in cash and equity. We dont share ranges at this stage because we dont know what skills youre coming in with and dont want to disqualify you depending on your needs. Once we have an idea well share our comp dataset with you so we see the same data. Were not Facebook or Google but were confident that well meet your financial needs.nn6. Location?nUS-friendly hours are strongly preferred. Were a 100% distributed team (most in Eastern and Central time in the US) and we keep our meetings to an absolute minimum. However, we work semi-synchronously collaborating on zoom so its important to have 4+ hours overlap with US eastern time.nnWhat youll need to be successful:nExpertise in interaction design: You think in flows, not just static screens. Youve been making it effortless for people to move around consumer applications for many years. Other designers respect your interaction skills and tap you for advice.nnExpertise in user-centered design methods: Customer feedback is an inspiration and something you crave to keep your creative juices flowing. You use iterations to maximize your opportunities for feedback. You know what needs to be learned, how to put together a discussion guide, facilitate the session and synthesize the findings.nnGood visual design fundamentals: Making the right typography choice or reworking a layout to optimize clarity is effortless for you. You know how to apply a style guide effectively but also know when to extend beyond it.nnCompetent writer: Youve solved design problems with words and designed with content.nnSkills and experience that separate you from your peersnnSeveral years of mobile design experiencenData visualization chopsnWorked on products that design for behavior changenMotion design experiencenEffective across a wide range of design toolsnIf this sounds interesting, lets talk.nInstead of a cover letter, email me at jeff@risescience.com | Subject: Lead Product Designer and include your answers to the questions below. We appreciate thoughtful responses, but please dont spend more than an hour.nnTell me why this opportunity feels right to you. What did you respond to in the letter?nnThink about your current or last job. When its time for me to talk with your boss what would they rate your performance 1-10? Why? What were you hired to do?nnWed love to understand the relevant work youve done. If you have a tidy portfolio, feel free to send the link/pdf it will help us speed things up. If you dont have a portfolio, youll need to get creative. nnWhat can you send us that would give us confidence youve got the relevant skills? Well be going deep on your work in our 2nd conversation so dont spend too much time here.nnWhat to expect NextnIll hand review what you send. Ill respond with either I dont think the fit is here or that we should move forward with the process. If we move forward, heres the rest of the process well use to learn together if this is an amazing fit for you:nn1. 45 min Interview: We meet over Zoom to meet each other and decide if spending more time together makes sense. Your time is valuable and we dont want to waste it.nn2. 60 mins Work Review: Youve read the job letter and what we need you to do. During this conversation Ill ask you to walk through, in detail, how youve done this in a past job. I may invite a few team members to join.nn3. Paid Work Simulation: Well send over a take-home challenge that will let us simulate working together. This is designed to be similar to the type of work we do here at Rise Science. This stage should take no more than 3 hours, and well both have a clear sense of how we work together by the end.nn4. Team Talks: At this stage were incredibly confident that the role will be great for you. Get to know the team youd be working with. Youll find time with 1-4 of your potential future team members. nnPlease mention the word DARING** when applying to show you read the job post completely (#RMi41Ny4yOS4xNDY=). This is a feature to avoid spam applicants. Companies can search these words to find applicants that read this and see they’re human.nn nn#Salary and compensationn $120,000 $220,000/yearn nn#Benefitsn Distributed teamnn nn#LocationnUnited States, Canada

Tagged as: Data Engineer, Designer, marketing, mobile, Product Designer