Digital Designer

About us

Shorthand exists to empower creative teams to produce and publish beautiful, transformative content radically faster. We’ve begun our journey by creating an easy-to-use platform for one of the most creatively and technically demanding use cases on the web — immersive feature stories — and we’re proud to count many of the world’s best known and most discerning publishers, brands, not-for-profits, and universities as loyal customers.

Shorthand is a growing, investor-backed company with customers on every continent (except Antarctica!), and there’s never been a more exciting time to join our band of geeks with art and heart.

We’re looking for a creative, tech-savvy Digital Designer to join our fully remote team. The role comes with a high level of responsibility and autonomy. This is a fantastic opportunity to join an ambitious but down-to-earth team that is making an outsized positive impact in the digital publishing space.

What you’ll be doing 

Premium digital design and visual storytelling are a big part of the Shorthand magic. The purpose of this role is to help our customers create beautifully engaging visual content using our web publishing platform. You'll know you've succeeded in this role when your efforts help our customers gain recognition for creating world-class web content and digital communications.

The successful candidate will join our Growth and Marketing team, and report to the VP of Growth and Marketing. The role will also collaborate closely with our Design, Customer Success, and Sales teams.

We are looking for someone based in Australia or New Zealand with exceptional verbal and written communication skills in English.

In this role, you’ll:

• Use the Shorthand editor, alongside other design tools, to develop customisable feature article templates to inspire customers and help them get started with the Shorthand platform.
• Deliver Shorthand story design services to customers who are short on in-house design resources.
• Engage in story co-creation with new customers who are in the onboarding process.
• Design materials for Shorthand’s website as required, such as visual assets and landing pages.

What we’re looking for

The successful candidate:

• Has a portfolio demonstrating a high standard of digital communications design, with a minimum of 3 years relevant professional experience. Please include a link to your portfolio with your application. We would love to see examples of your work in any or all of: magazine/editorial layout, annual reports or other corporate communications, longform advertising/marketing campaigns, not-for-profit or government comms, brand style guides.
• Has experience delivering design work in a broad range of styles to match customers’ brand guidelines and content objectives. 
• Has experience designing to meet UX and conversion goals, and an openness to using qualitative and/or quantitative data to optimise designs.
• Has experience managing project timelines and interfacing directly with customers in relation to requirements and feedback. 
• Has experience with basic CSS and HTML, or the willingness to learn with support from our technical support engineers.
• Is a savvy, customer-focused problem solver, with empathy in spades, and always willing to go that extra mile.
• Has an extremely high bar for quality.
• Has outstanding written and face-to-face communication skills.
• Can ruthlessly prioritise competing demands, and stay calm under pressure.
• Preferably has experience collaborating with diverse, geographically-dispersed teams.

You’ll be a great fit for our team if:

• You have exceptional attention to detail.
• You are collaborative and know how to work with others to meet shared goals.
• You gain deep satisfaction from helping others reach their goals.
• You are a proactive self-starter, who does not need to be told what to do and will be resourceful in order to find solutions to any challenge.
• You thrive in a fast-paced and demanding environment, and possess a high level of intellectual curiosity.

Why work for us

We offer:

• Options for working your way: fully remote working, flexible hours and an allowance for a co-working space if you prefer.
• True autonomy, with freedom to own and grow the role you occupy.
• The opportunity to work in a growing SaaS company that is still small enough that you can make a real impact.
• An allowance for setting up your home office, a laptop, and any peripherals you need to do your job.
• An Employee Option Plan for all team members.
• A Health and Wellness fund to support your healthy lifestyle, as well as access to coaching and counselling services.
• Paid parental leave if you are growing your tribe.
• A base salary range of AUD $90-100K FTE. Base salary ranges are determined by multiple factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skills, experience and local market benchmarks.

Shorthand’s interview process

We value direct communication here at Shorthand and want to be transparent on how we hire. Our process involves:

1. An initial Zoom screen: You’ll have an informal Zoom meeting with the hiring manager to discuss your background, the role, and what led you to apply.
2. A work task: We’ll ask you to complete a take-home task, similar to the work you’ll be doing in the role, using our software platform. This should take approximately 2-4 hours. This helps you to develop familiarity with our platform ahead of meeting with the hiring panel and helps us to verify that you’d be a great fit for the role.
3. Interviews: You’ll have interviews with the hiring panel over Zoom. This means you’ll typically get to meet another 3 people from Shorthand, including our CEO.
4. Final checks: The successful candidate will undergo a reference and criminal background check prior to us sending the final employment agreement.

Our workplace is 100% distributed and all interviews are conducted virtually unless otherwise advised. Please let us know of any reasonable accommodations you may need during the interview process.