Design Lead

About Us At Dagster Labs, our mission is simple but ambitious: to empower every organization to build a productive, scalable data platform. We’re the brains behind Dagster, the open-source tool developers love, and Dagster+, our managed cloud. From scrappy startups to global enterprises, thousands of teams trust us to power the data behind their analytics, machine learning, and AI breakthroughs. We believe the AI era runs on reliable, high-quality data. That’s why we make data platforms easier to test, easier to understand, and actually enjoyable to use. Dagster is quickly becoming the backbone of how the world builds intelligent systems, and the best AI companies are built on top of Dagster. We’re a small, well-funded team with big energy and a track record of shipping software people rave about. We aim high and work as a team, holding ourselves to the highest standards and trusting eachother to deliver. We care about how we work together: no egos, no drama, just a lot of curiosity and a drive to make something meaningful. If you want to help shape the future of data and AI and have fun doing it, come build with us. About the Role As a Design Lead at Dagster Labs, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the end-to-end user experience across both product and brand. Design is a core differentiator for Dagster, and we operate as a single, cohesive design team across product and brand. This role is responsible for leading design across both product and marketing surfaces, including managing designers working on product and marketing initiatives, and ensuring coherence between how Dagster is built, presented, and experienced. This is a player / coach role. You’ll contribute hands-on design work on high-impact initiatives while also leading and managing a small team of designers. You’ll be responsible for setting a clear design point of view, reviewing and guiding work through others, and developing designers through feedback, coaching, and clear expectations. Your role is not just to produce strong design, but to raise the bar for design quality across the team. You’ll operate as a design leader and peer to product and engineering leadership, influencing strategy, tradeoffs, and priorities across teams. You’ll help shape both the product experience and the brand, ensuring that what we build is not only powerful and correct, but clear, cohesive, and well-designed. Designers at Dagster Labs are empowered to engage directly with our active open-source community (you can join our community Slack here to see it firsthand). We’re a small, ambitious team with no shortage of challenging and impactful design problems. Your work will meaningfully influence the product, the brand, and the overall user experience. This is a full-time position offering competitive salary, equity, and benefits. We are a distributed team with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis. We’re open to hiring fully remote candidates who are currently authorized to work within the United States. We offer flexible remote work options so you can choose the environment that makes you most productive—whether that’s your home or a coworking space. Dagster Labs fosters a collaborative, remote-first culture, ensuring you have all the tools and support needed to thrive, no matter where you are. Responsibilities Lead and manage a small team of designers, including regular 1:1s, performance feedback, career development, and accountability for design quality and team health Lead design across both product and marketing, including managing designers working on product and marketing initiatives and ensuring alignment between product UX, brand expression, and go-to-market experiences Operate as a peer to product and engineering leadership, influencing strategy, tradeoffs, and priorities across teams Contribute hands-on design work on high-impact initiatives, particularly where modeling quality, de-risking complex problems, or setting direction is most valuable Own design outcomes end-to-end, balancing direct contribution with guiding, reviewing, and elevating the work of other designers Create and review design artifacts (flows, prototypes, systems, documentation) that clarify intent, align teams, and guide execution Proactively identify opportunities to improve the user experience and shape new product capabilities for data engineers and technical users Engage directly with the Dagster open-source community, Dagster+ customers, and customer support, grounding design decisions in real user needs and validation Develop designers across levels through clear expectations, feedback, and coaching, supporting both craft growth and career progression Must-have Qualifications 8+ years of experience designing enterprise-grade software, with a portfolio demonstrating strong systems thinking and high-quality craft Experience leading and managing designers, including setting direction, giving feedback, and supporting growth Experience leading and coordinating design across product and marketing, including managing designers in different design disciplines and aligning brand and product experiences across teams Experience designing tools for developers or data practitioners Comfort working in technical environments, including familiarity with developer tools such as Git, VSCode, React, and modern front-end frameworks Experience operating as a design leader and peer to product, engineering, and company leadership, influencing strategy, tradeoffs, and execution across teams Nice-to-have Qualifications Experience designing tools for developers or data practitioners. Experience using developer tools like Git, VSCode, React, Vercel Experience with Webflow You Belong Here We are committed to building an inclusive team and an open-source community where no one feels out of place. We know that teams with diverse backgrounds state their assumptions more explicitly, think more rigorously, and build better software. Plus it's more fun and interesting to work with a wide variety of perspectives. You should apply to work at Dagster Labs if you want to work in, and help to build and strengthen, a high-performing software development environment where people of all backgrounds are welcome. The estimated cash salary for this role is $185,000 to $270,000. Other Resources What is Dagster, a guide to the problems we solve and the philosophy driving our approach A Look Inside the Dagster Labs Culture Our Latest Dagster Release Introducing the new Dagster+ UI Introducing Compass Data Platform Week 2024 blog post & video playlist