What is it like to have a career at Nubank’s Design team?

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Design is one of Nubank’s main pillars, where people work from end-to-end on the development of complex products that revolutionize the market and put people at the center of all decisions.

Today, Nubank’s Design team has over 200 people. This enables us to work collaboratively with a diverse team all the time. Our teams work in big Business Units (BUs) focused on products. Inside them, we have clusters of multidisciplinary squads that always work collaboratively: Product Manager (PM), Product Design (PD), Product Operations (POps), Software Engineering, and Business Analysts.

The design culture is at the core of our business. We are very obsessed with providing the best experiences for our users. And over here, everyone knows the importance of putting them at the center of our decisions. We do research and validate with users on everything that we want to implement. This idea is very clear for Nubank’s culture: we remember, throughout the whole project, how important it is to do what we do.

The Design team at Nubank is divided into some disciplines:

Product Designers

They can be part of one or more squads, depending on the experience of the designer and the team’s size. They work in constant contact and collaboration with the PM. This team is responsible for planning the experience from end-to-end —from a product’s strategy to its execution, with a global vision of what will come to life.

UXR – Researchers

They work between squads, talking with the Strategy, PM, and PD sectors. They are responsible for conducting, managing, and ensuring the good use of what was learned in the research in all business units. At the BUs, many teams work alongside data scientists, Product Designers, BA, and Customer Insights, among others.

Their goal is to influence and bring insights to impact the business or the product. The UXR is our main collaborator for insight surveys, participating in every process, with mixed methodologies: qualitative and quantitative, anthropological approach, ethnographic and in-depth research. 

Content Designers

Content designers create simple, useful and human experiences, using our experience in user experience design, design thinking, product strategy, and writing. They know the power of a huge hierarchy of information, clear terminology, and navigation, as well as how carefully developed UX flows can make a user’s journey go from confusing to intuitive.

Here, you will find a career path in Y, where you could follow the IC (individual and expert collaborator) or the Manager (management) professional path.

How do each of these paths work?

IC – This Nubanker will work as an expert. That’s why it is normal to focus more on technical skills and stand out among the team.

Manager – Besides articulating excellent technical skills in Design, the main goal is to develop their leadership skills and guide the team.

Today, our recruiting process follows these steps.

• First interview with recruiters: This first moment is for us to understand more about your career, as well as talk about our team’s situation and answer questions. The idea is to have a 45-minute video chat.
  
• Portfolio presentation
  
  Here, people present two projects they worked on from end-to-end for a design team.
  
• Final interviews with Senior Managers
  
  Here, we talk about behavioral points with the Design leadership.
  

Expected Skills

In our team, we have people with completely different careers who come from all sorts of fields, such as consumer goods, financial, technology, consultancy, and start-ups. With a (formal or informal) background in design, research, and journalism. The most important aspect is having experience with end-to-end products and being able to transition between business, discovery, delivery of screens and metrics, in addition to having a collaborative profile.

We asked our Design team what makes Nubank such a cool company to work for. Check out some messages we have received:

“To help people understand that it is indeed possible to have a healthy relationship with money, that money is not so complicated, and that having access to financial resources is a kind of freedom.”

Cristina (Design Manager)

“To understand how people think and communicate, creating experiences that speak their language.”

Thiago (Design Manager)

“To understand clients’ reality and create products that truly impact their lives making them feel that they are important.”

Fernando (Design Manager)

“To work with technology to solve one of the most complex problems, which is personal and small business finances in Latin America—but without the feeling of working for a “bank,” with all the negative atmosphere that was created in regards to this kind of institution over time.”

Paula (Sr. Design Manager)

Written by: Juliana Ricci
Reviewed by: Design Team and Julia Bragança