Manager, Product Design

The National Restaurant Association and National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation are proud to be part of a highly respected industry, providing hospitality, opportunity, and quality of life. Much like the industry we represent, we have a dynamic, diverse, and inclusive culture grounded in trust, hospitality, collaboration, and innovation. These core values inspire our work, and we are looking for in an experienced Designer to lead our product design team in building high quality, effective, user-centered design experiences for our training & certification products.

The learning products offered by the National Restaurant Association, and its family of brands ServSafe, ServSuccess, National Registry of Food Safety Professionals, and American Hotel and Lodging Educational Institute, has led the way in training and certifying millions of current and future hospitality workers. We provide best-in-class food safety, lodging, and leadership training to, hoteliers, food service businesses, and academic institutions across the world. We equip our global audience with innovative, engaging training utilizing multiple platforms, from textbooks to online resources to mobile applications, with a focus on both compliance-driven and career-development suites.

As the Manager, Product Design, you will be instrumental in setting the general design direction to support our award-winning suite of digital and print programs. You will be responsible for partnering with Product Management, Instructional Design, Editorial, and Operations, to establish innovative design practices and effective processes, producing work that ultimately meets the evolving needs of our dynamic industry.

This position requires a creative, collaborative, and inspired leader with a minimum of seven years of visual, product and/or user-experience design, and proven experience managing a team of design professionals. Must have strong visual communication skills and excellent understanding of customer-focused design. Previous experience working within educational product design is a plus, as is knowledge of accessible design standards. You will thrive in this role if you are a natural problem-solver and confident communicator, eager to drive results in a fast-paced and fluid work environment.

This is a Chicago based, hybrid position, with generally a minimum two days in office.

Please submit work samples along with a resume. Submitted work can be PDF attachments or links to portfolio webpages.

Responsibilities:

• Work as part of the Business Services team to accomplish Association goals.
• Assist the Creative Director to accomplish departmental goals.
• Lead the Product Design team, and assist the Creative Director in overseeing resource allocation, timeline estimation, and design practices.
• Establish and implement effective design methods, processes, and tools to support the product design team.
• Ensure the quality, usability, consistency, brand relevance, and functionality of finished deliverables.
• Execute project-based product design, including concepting and designing learning experiences across multiple platforms (print, web, and mobile) and present concepts, prototypes, and final products to team leads.
• Assist in establishing and maintaining vendor relationships and oversee outsourced projects.
• Work within cloud-based collaboration tools such as Adobe Cloud, Microsoft Teams, and others.
• Support all internal team members and departments following the Association mission and values while promoting Association culture.
• Perform related tasks as required.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in graphic or multi-media design.
• Minimum 7 years of experience in visual, product and/or user-experience design.
• Proven people management skills, (including coaching and motivating), specifically managing the work of design professionals.
• Deep functional knowledge of design best practices, processes.
• Expert knowledge of the principles of typography and iconography, graphic design principles and methodologies, and print- and web-production processes.
• Deep functional knowledge and demonstrated skills with UI/UX design.
• Deep functional knowledge of print and media asset production processes.
• Expertise in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite – including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Working knowledge of Creative Cloud video and animation tools is a plus.
• Working knowledge of learning authoring tools is a plus.
• Broad fundamental understanding of the restaurant industry/business environment.
• Provides and receives productive design feedback with professionalism.
• Experience in using both Mac and PC.
• Demonstrative abilities in collaborative team and consensus building (including internal and cross-functional groups).
• Strong interpersonal, conflict management, and diplomacy skills.
• Highly effective organizational, time-management and priority-setting skills.
• Exceptional analytical and critical thinking skills with the ability to tackle complex problems and challenges.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced and fluid work environment.
• Sound problem-solving and decision-making acumen.
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills.
• Proficiency across Microsoft Office products, including Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, and comfortable learning new technology platforms as needed.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, age, disability status, genetic information and testing, family and medical leave, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We strongly encourage women, people of color, people with disabilities and veterans to apply for our job openings. This commitment supports our policy of developing and capitalizing on the abilities of all our team members, as well as selecting, developing and promoting those who are best qualified.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)