L ocation: Berlin, Germany with opportunities for hybrid working

Term: Full-time, Permanent

Salary: Depending on professional experience

Your role:

The Product Designer provides professional input to our product development team in the Berlin Head Office. Your two areas of focus will be conceptualising user interfaces for software used to control our loudspeakers and conceptualising their hardware user interfaces.

To be effective in this work you will holistically review the customer journey from discovering customer requirements all the way through testing designs and seeing them implemented in the project. Of course, no effort is complete without an effective feedback loop to bring continuous improvement - and Product Design is a very good place to do this.

What you'll be doing:

You will play a key role in the design of software interfaces and physical hardware interfaces for our audio products.

You will be the representative of the customer’s experiential journey when using our products within the development team, so you will:

• Develop research strategies and then gather data to understand the customer’s needs, pain points, feature usage, etc.
• Interact with end-customers and relevant parts of ADAM, such as the Support and Service teams, to gather the above data
• In the virtual world, conceptualise using wireframes, interactive prototypes and then test well thought out, logical, intuitive and user-friendly new concepts, including creating elegant control elements. Based on the gained feedback, modify the concepts until sufficiently well developed to have them artistically designed (we have someone who can do this, but it is nice bonus if you can also do this) and implemented by the software development team.
• In the physical world, interact with external Industrial Designers to ensure their concepts are based good customer experience, then use “cardboard engineering” and other methods to test designs and work with our Mechanical Engineering team to optimise the design.
• Integrate all the above into user stories, use cases and product requirements
• Be an advocate for the end user during the project to ensure the project team’s work is influenced from a deep understanding of users’ goals, needs, pain points, behaviours and contexts
• Measure the results to bring continuous product improvement in both the software and hardware domains

To support the above work, you will:

• Identify and define requirements for translation into software and hardware designs and work with Product Management to role these into the complete product requirements list
• Work with product management, software developers (internal and external) and our in-house artistic designer to further develop the design guidelines according to modern software working methods, competition offerings and market trends.
• Ensure there is good documentation of the design guidelines and their implementation.
• Develop and represent new ideas and concepts in the using commonly used standard visual design tools, such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Sketch, Axure, Framer, Figma, etc.
• Conceptualise new hardware interface designs for physical products whilst respecting acoustical constraints and user requirements.
• Present a variety of suitable options to product management, together with pros/cons/risks/costs etc., so rational business decisions can be taken.

An ideal candidate is likely to have:

• A Bachelor’s/Master’s degree or equivalent in Product Design, User Experience, User Research, Human Hardware/Software Interaction, or a related subject
• A significant (3-5+years) track record in Product Design, ideally for audio products, and with a portfolio of excellent designs
• Fluent written and oral English - We are an international company, so German is a bonus, not mandatory. In addition, your reporting line will be to the Director of Product - a British colleague who is based in Finland.
• The ability to work independently, within international teams and with limited direct supervision
• Excellent presentation skills for communications to internal colleagues and external customers
• The ability to design to cost for entry-level products, design for performance for high- end products, and balance the two for mainstream products
• The ability to design for the different needs of various platforms whilst maintaining product consistency across those platforms
• The ability to operate in the diverse worlds of subjective artistic customers and objective development engineers and feel comfortable doing that
• A good understanding in these areas: studio workflow, mechanical design, acoustical design, electronics design, software design
• Some affinity with the audio community: musician, recording, general appreciate for audio, etc.
• The ability and willingness to work cross-functionally across the business to optimise product design for functionality, look, feel, cost, etc.

If you do not satisfy all the requirements listed above, please do not worry. We “hire for attitude and train for skills”, so a good fit is far more important than not having used a specific piece of software before.

Let us know what you’d bring to the role, and why you’d be a great fit for the team. We look forward to receiving your application

About us

ADAM Audio GmbH is a rapidly growing, internationally positioned Focusrite AG company based in Berlin Adlershof.

We are one of the market-leading manufacturers of professional monitoring solutions. Our customers include renowned recording studios and well-known music producers all over the world, and our products have also been used to soundtrack numerous Oscar-nominated films in recent years.

Since 2019, ADAM Audio is part of Focusrite plc which houses seven other, highly respected pro audio brands: Martin Audio, Optimal Audio, Sequential, Focusrite, Focusrite Pro, Novation and Ampify. Our international team at the Berlin-based HQ and offices in the USA and China live their passion for music. We constantly drive ourselves to bring fresh ideas and new technologies to our high-quality products to meet the needs of pro audio enthusiasts and recording professionals alike.

We pride ourselves in providing some of the tools that empower creatives all over the world to bring their visions to life. Covering a wide range of products for different levels and budgets, we engage with artists, producers and engineers to become a companion throughout the various stages of their journey.

Our whole business is structured to let everyone contribute and be heard at all levels, and we make sure it’s a fun place to work. As a team, we work hard and support each other to master our individual tasks, building and developing the skills of talented and passionate people – to achieve a common goal. So, if you think you can bring something new to the mix, we look forward to hearing from you.

Benefits include:

• AG Bonus Programme (company performance) as part of the Focusrite Group
• Flexible working hours with pragmatic remote working solutions
• Support with health care
• Regular language lessons
• Employee product discounts
• Staff events
• Free fruit baskets, tea and coffee.

ADAM Audio is an equal opportunity employer. Our employees span a wide range of diverse backgrounds and we believe that embracing diversity is one of the keys to our future success.