What we do

Overleaf is a social enterprise that builds modern collaborative authoring tools for scientists — like Google Docs for Science. We have over nine million registered users from around the world. Our primary product is an online, real time collaborative editor for papers, theses, technical reports and other documents written in the LaTeX markup language.

About this role

We are looking for a UX designer who has experience crafting user interfaces for the web and systematizing interface elements through design systems/style guides. You will be key in helping us evolve Overleaf by delivering high quality and consistent user interfaces, as well as discovering opportunities and pain-points through user research and analytics.

You will have autonomy in developing your designs, from concept to execution, but you won’t be alone. You will be part of a cross-functional team. Product managers that will help you understand where your work fits in our roadmap; data analysts will help you define metrics and measure success; developers will help you make your designs come to life.

This year, we are excited to be working on:

• Building UI helpers that will allow less experienced users to create figures and tables without coding.
• Improving, gathering and consolidating our UI elements into a design system—you will be key in this.
• Levelling up the design of some of our acquisition-related homepages, e.g. plans and pricing page; homepage.
• Launching user research initiatives to better understand the onboarding process for new users and the needs of institutional clients.
• Growing our analytics system and team to generate insights into our B2C funnel and help us understand our users better, while respecting their privacy.
• Enhance the collaboration experience on our product to make it even more compelling for teams.

Here is an example of a feature that we launched recently to help users find and insert common symbols into their projects.

What we’re looking for

• Strong UI design skills:
  • You should be able to design and prototype solutions (with various degrees of fidelity) based on a solid understanding of the problem space.
  • Your design decisions are based on common design patterns, guidelines and user research. You pay close attention to usability, accessibility and detail.
  • You are comfortable with the visual aspects of design (color, typography, layout); you are able to uphold (and contribute to) brand guidelines and can deliver functional and appealing UI design solutions.
  • You should be comfortable iterating based on feedback and collaboration with stakeholders (e.g. product managers and developers).
  • We don’t expect you to code but, as a designer, we expect you to be familiar with the media you design for, as well as its constraints.
  • You should be proficient with industry-standard UI editing and prototyping tools (we use Figma internally).
• Experience in developing and maintaining, together with developers, a design system or style guide.
• Some experience (or interest in) doing graphic design yourself would be valuable, as well as a keen eye for typography (as LaTeX is all about excellent typesetting!).
• Some experience (or interest in) doing user research. You should base your design decisions on a deep understanding of your users’ needs.
• Someone who enjoys working collaboratively with people from various disciplines: we work in trios (product, UX, engineering) and sometimes quartets (including support) to understand the problem space and come up with solutions together.
• Finally, some familiarity with publishing, the scholarly market and scientific research would help you better understand the sector Overleaf operates in.

Who we are

Overleaf was founded by two mathematicians who were inspired by their own experiences in academia to create a better solution for scientific collaboration and communication. Now we are a team of about fifty based mainly in the UK, Europe, the US and Canada. We were recently recognised as one of the UK’s top 100 fastest growing businesses and as the Best SaaS for Nonprofits or Education in the 2020 SaaS Awards Program. Our vision is to be the go-to place for writing scientific documents.

How we work

Overleaf is (and was, even before the pandemic) remote-first — all founders and staff work remotely. We also have an office in Farringdon for those in the London area, and non-mandatory get-togethers a few times a year.

We encourage flexible working. Our core hours are 2pm–5pm UK time, during which our development and product teams have 10–15 minute daily standup calls.

We always collect user feedback and data to inform our work. UX team members work alongside product managers and data analysts to ensure users are the key Overleaf stakeholders.

We have a flexible roadmap that we review quarterly, which includes regular user-facing releases. Our Product team works closely with everyone in the company, from Support, to Finance and Marketing to understand every aspect of how we can best deliver value to our users. Our roadmap also includes initiatives driven by staff and quarterly hackathons to keep our learning fresh.

How we Hire

The stages in our hiring process are typically:

1. We will aim to update you on the status of your application within two weeks from when we receive it.
2. We’ll follow up by email (or sometimes schedule a phone call) with any questions we have about your application, usually around logistics, your ambitions and your expectations about the role.
3. We’ll schedule a more in-depth interview, which is typically followed or combined with a practical assignment. For the practical, you’ll have the option of either completing a homework assignment, which requires about one hour of your time before the interview, or doing an exercise during the interview, if you prefer. The exercises are practical in nature, and you can use existing resources, templates, Google, etc., and ask us questions.
4. We’ll make an offer. We usually interview in batches, so there may be a short delay while we interview other candidates, but we will try to keep you informed throughout the process.

If you have a deadline, please let us know in your application, and we will try to be accommodating.

Requirements

We require that you:

• Have a minimum of 2–3 years of relevant experience.
• Have a portfolio demonstrating experience designing for the web.
• Will work for us full time (or nearly full time).
• Will usually be available in our core hours, 2pm–5pm UK time.
• Are based in the UK, Europe, US or Canada.

Benefits

• Remote and flexible working.
• Salary £40k–£65k per year depending on experience.
• You would join a small, dedicated and growing team.
• We’re substantially (around 80%) open source, so your work will often be on open source.
• We’re backed by Bethnal Green Ventures and Digital Science, through which we’re part of a wider community of startups in science, health and ed-tech.
• Our London office is shared with several other Digital Science companies, so there’s lots of interesting people to meet, and clubs and sports activities outside of work.
• You can pick your own equipment. MacBook Pro? Lenovo ThinkPad? Notebook and pen? However you like to work, we’ll provide what you need.
• We provide a training budget; many of our staff choose to attend relevant industry conferences or buy training materials.
• We run a biweekly internal seminar series (show and tell) with short talks from staff about their work or personal projects, new technologies and techniques.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.