Full Job Description

At Microsoft, we believe UX design only becomes great when language is simple, clear, and designed to flow naturally from one concept to the next. That’s where you come in.

We’re looking for a Senior Content Designer to join the Microsoft intelligence platform. As a key member of our multidisciplinary design team, you’ll be collaborating on the design and delivery experiences that millions of data experts, report creators, and business consumers love.

Passionate about simplifying technology? Same.
Complexity brings out your curiosity. You’re a seriously seasoned Content Designer who loves creating deceptively simple software — the kinds of experiences that feel efficient, effortless, and rewarding because you’ve sweated every detail and distilled every concept down to its purest, simplest form.

You know the power of great information hierarchy, clear terminology, and navigation — and can speak to how carefully crafted UX flows can transform the customer journey from confusing to intuitive. Informing and evolving that journey with insights from research and data is second nature to you.

Yes, you know and love the cloud.

While you love simple, your skillset is anything but. You’ve made apps from scratch as part of an interdisciplinary product design team in cloud, business, enterprise, or developer spaces. With a diverse skillset and loads of experience, you trust your approach and ability to figure out the best next action without a lot of second-guessing or hand-holding. You collaborate with ease (up/down/across) and are adept at influencing using loads of optimism, a hunger for feedback, a retractable ego, and growth mindset.

Dropdown or radio buttons? UI text or tooltip?

Your communications chops are interaction specific. You understand the concepts of drilling down, reducing friction, and offering bits of guidance right when—and only when—it’s needed. You know the value of using and contributing to design patterns, UI toolkits, and style guides to keep product teams aligned so content stays consistent, cohesive, and intentional.

Responsibilities
Strategy

• Understand business metrics and translate company goals and objectives into customer experiences; identify and guide others to identify complex customer needs and business requirements; drive product content planning to fulfill identified needs; understand, envision, and influence multiple products and their written content strategies with their team and across product groups.
• Know the product area and demonstrate knowledge of customer personas, their jobs/tasks/needs, how competitors meet those needs, and where their solutions fall short; propose new design-led efforts to change how customers think about Microsoft and products.
• Translate business and user needs and technology constraints into solution concepts that are meaningful, easy to use, and engaging; concept and iterate for complex products in design meetings to improve product designs and structure flows; utilize a variety of perspectives when concepting including Technology, Business, and Marketing; contribute to ongoing design system development, driving expansion of the design system across teams; work directly with Design and Engineering team members, program managers, and developers to define and iterate on new and existing product features; define new processes to create strongly aligned product outcomes; synthesize complex ideas, articulate user wants, and drive data-informed solutions.
• Define and prioritize product plans based on multiple factors such as user insights and business needs; create clarity for other members of the team; begin influencing the prioritization of the product backlog; identify needs that are not spoken and include them in end-to-end design plan and process.

Stucture

• Combine User Experience (UX) thinking with design execution to produce usable and intuitive user interfaces; collaborate with product owners and development team members to shepherd end-to-end experiences from concept to product shipment for products; raise the content design bar with innovative solution strategies and experience design recommendations.
• Create and optimize sound Information Architecture (IA) for the purpose of coherent task completion; structure product content, develop taxonomies, craft navigation, name components/controls, and define the messaging hierarchy to make information accessible, usable, and understandable.

Surface

• Contribute to and articulate a shared vision and tools to create, collaborate, and build effective products at scale; apply execution of voice principles, terminology, and language usage.
• Drive terminology decision-making to bring an informed point of view, experience, and data/research; communicate in a purposeful, concise, and conversational manner; advise on how to embed key concepts, names, terms, and copy which are aligned with customers’ intent and mental models; champion best practices across the organization which promote clear, concise, and meaningful language that is aligned with Microsoft’s voice and style standards.
• Develop a synthesis of user insights and compares to data to identify larger issues.
• Use digital and physical tools to demonstrate design to stakeholders and/or for research; advocate for prototyping; prototype in accordance with company’s brand and guidelines, and invent/improve guidelines when existing guidelines are unclear; develop deep domain knowledge in multiple product areas and how to solve their problems; mentor peers in multiple areas of expertise; be a content design subject matter expert for the company, adding perspective such as tone in customer journey, brand, and influencing partners outside of Design.
• Deeply understand broader business landscape, and leverage knowledge to drive the success of the team and organization as a whole; craft and coach others on crafting clear written communication to guide customers through an experience, and pair with visual design; present to teams such as Design and Engineering and/or customers to receive feedback and understand user needs; drive and create proposals for simpler, modern, and better solutions; look beyond their domain to engage with Microsoft’s wider product portfolio.

Strategic Value

• Use and create design system patterns, brand voice principles, and style guides; create and extend style and usage guidance for multiple products; drive innovation and investment in the future of content design.
• Help others use design system, and drive consistency and alignment within the team; advocate for their design system and style standards across product group(s).
• Apply marketing strategy to devise product positioning, messaging direction, and creative execution guidance for use across the customer journey in any channel or experience.

Effective Communication

• Facilitate brainstorming sessions and/or workshops to answer critical business questions through design thinking, rapid prototyping, and testing ideas.
• Influence, persuade, and sell work effectively in all contexts to amplify individual and team capabilities, expand design thinking, and broaden the impact of work; convey confidence, communicate the vision, back decisions and recommendations with data, and gather frustration-free feedback in design reviews with teammates and stakeholders, consistently leading to better project results.
• Present ideas and concepts at all stages of the design process — research and analysis, personas, design concepts, usability testing — adapting presentations for different audiences.

Other

Embody our culture and values

Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Arts, Digital Communications, UX Design, Human Computer Interaction, Communications, English, Journalism, or related field
• 4+ years experience working in product or service design, copywriting, technical writing, writing (e.g. for marketing, advertising, e-commerce), brand design, or brand marketing
• Knowledge of Agile methodologies
• Great communication skills, written and verbal

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

Master’s Degree in Arts, Digital Communications, UX Design, Human Computer Interaction, Communications, English, Journalism, or related field and/or 6+ years experience working in product or service design

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Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.