Now Hiring: A Designer Who Can Ship

I run 3 businesses:

1. Design System University , an online school to help people working at enterprise organizations to design and build at scale through self-paced and live courses.
2. Great Job! , a platform to help parents and caregivers design their own handbooks for raising amazing kids.
3. Dan Mall Teaches, private consulting and coaching from me around design systems, design process and leadership, and career growth (though no one ever sees this name)

I’m hiring a designer who can ship to help me with these businesses.

Most of your work across these businesses will be in the order that I listed them above.

The most important thing to me in hiring someone is making sure we align. I’m all for discussion and debate, but the more time we spend trying to convince each other of stuff is time we’re not shipping. Here’s a guide to working with me. I’m very particular. I’d rather we realize now that I’m the kind of person you’d hate to work for that to find that out later.

Skills & responsibilities

The closest phrase I can come up with for the type of person I’m looking for is “a designer who can ship,” but please allow me to explain that further.

I’m looking for someone who can free me up of the tactical digital design work I do. I’m a designer who ships stuff, so, in order for you to free me up, you have to be a designer who ships stuff too. Here are the types of projects I’d like to get off my plate that would be in your purview:

• Creating social media graphics
• Turning a book of mine into a website people can read for free
• Creating promotional material for events
• Editing videos
• Adding new pages to websites built in tools like Framer and Webflow
• Creating web apps with the help of tools like Cursor and Claude
• Designing and publishing e-books
• Evaluating and setting up third-party software
• Creating and modifying marketing and email automations

As I hope you can see, the term “designer“ doesn’t really cut it. If you’re the kind of designer who designs screens, hands them off to someone else, and then sometime later those designs are magically live on the internet, we’re not aligned. If you’re designing YouTube thumbnails, I want you to upload them to YouTube too. If you’re mocking up some information architecture changes to a website, I’d like to see it as live web pages soon.

The core skills of the person I hire will probably lie mostly within UI, UX, digital, and graphic design at a senior level. That probably means you’re very comfortable in apps like Figma and Adobe Creative Suite. I need you to be very good with typography and spacing. I’d also like you to have the ability to ship software that end users can interact with. I’m not particular about whether that means you have expertise coding in languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, PHP, etc. or if you’re proficient in no-code/low-code tools like Framer, Webflow, or Wix Studio. Most of my web stuff uses Framer, but I’m open to changing that if you have a different expertise.

Some nice-to-haves include areas tangential to UI and graphic design but are not required. Still though, let me know if you do have skills in any of these areas:

• Illustration
• Motion & animation
• Video editing
• Photography
• Sound design
• Event production
• Copywriting
• Marketing/marketing automation
• SEO/SEM

Designing beautiful things

I think part of the job of a designer is to make things beautiful. Here are some things I found today on the internet that I think are beautiful.

If your gut reaction is that you’ve created stuff like this before and can again pretty easily, that’s a great sign. If your gut reaction after seeing these examples is that you don’t like them or you couldn’t easiliy create stuff like this, we’re probably not aligned enough for this job to be a good fit for you.

Compensation

I can pay $3,000/month for a remote contract position, paid on the first of every month.

If working together is going well after a few months, I’m open to and expect to increase both the workload and the pay.

I don’t care how many hours you work each month; I’ll look to you to set my expectations of what amount and pace of work to expect from you.

Other perks:

• You’ll need your own computer, but I’ll get you all the software, licenses, fonts, assets, templates, mockups, and more that you need to do the work I’m asking for
• Full access to me for any career guidance and mentorship outside of the work I’m asking you to do
• I have a massive network of friends and colleagues that I’d happily connect you to when mutually beneficial
• Full access to all of my paid and/or private resources like courses, books, and private events
• I’ll occasionally need help at live events I’m part of, so I’ll pay for your travel and food for any event you agree to attend with me (which will always be opt-in with no pressure whatsoever to opt-in)

Process, timeline, and dates

I published this job description on Friday, September 27.

I’ll start accepting applications on Friday, October 4. I’ll keep applications open for 2 weeks and close them on Friday, October 18.

If earlier posts are any indication, I’m expecting to receive anywhere from dozens to hundreds of applications. My goal would be to narrow down to a list of 10 candidates that I interview during the week of October 21.

For those of you that I don’t think are a good fit, I will send you a short email to let you know as much by Friday, October 25. I can’t promise to give any specific feedback in this email. If you’d like specific feedback about why you weren’t chosen, I’ll ask for your consent to make a video or write a post to critique your portfolio publicly so that others can learn from it as well.

After the 10 interviews, my goal will be to narrow down to 3 candidates, each of whom I’d like to hire for a small, 1-week $1,000 project that will start on Monday, October 28 and be due on Friday, November 1. I’ll give each candidate a choice of a few projects that suit their strengths, and we’ll collaborate on a scope that feels appropriate for the time and the pay. I think this will give me a good starting indication of how each person works and how aligned we would be.

I’ll review the projects and narrow down to the final candidate who I’d like to work with most and send them a written offer on Monday, November 4. You’ll have until Thursday, November 7 to accept or decline the offer. Assuming the offer is accepted, I’ll let the other two candidates know by Friday, November 8.

You’ll officially start with me on *Monday, November 11.

Tips for getting hired by me

The best way to get me to hire you is to show me that you already have the skills and experience to do the kind of work I’m hiring you to do. My ideal is to spend as little time training you as possible and as much time onboarding you as needed.

A porfolio is ideal way to show me this. And not just a general portfolio, but a portfolio that’s tailored towards the things you’ll be doing in working with me. I’ve written before about my tips for creating a portfolio that gets you hired and have taught them live too; following those tips would definitely get my attention.

On that note, I’ve been sharing stuff about me and the things that resonate with me on the internet for the last 19 years. I have almost 200 blog posts. I have a lot of free videos about how I work and think out there. Please read and watch at least some of these. The more you know about me, the higher the likelihood that you can pitch and propose something that will resonate with me.

If you hated reading this post because it was too long, you’re gonna hate working with me.

If this is one of many hundreds of jobs you’re applying to, I think the chances are low that it’s a good fit for both you and me. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be applying to multiple jobs. (If you’re looking for a job, you probably should be playing the field, especially in this market and economy.) I’m saying I’m a believer in choosing a select few that align well and putting more effort into those. If you don’t believe that, you’re probably going to hate working with me.

I don’t care too much about résumés, but if you think including a résumé is important to telling your story, feel free to include it.

The format of the application will be simple. It will be a form that includes these fields:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• Portfolio link
• Tell me everything (an open text box)

In the grand scheme of things, that’s pretty open-ended. I could be much more prescriptive, but that’s not really how I work. I like working with people by giving them very specific desired outcomes and a lot of autonomy to figure out how to get there. I don’t micromanage, and I don’t prescribe process. If you’re uncomfortable with ambiguity and/or you need a lot of specific direction to know if you’re doing a good job, you’ll hate working with me. I give a lot of feedback when asked, and I also appreciate working with people who can work very independently. This application is my first chance to see that from you.

What a good fit might look like

Here are a few examples of people’s situations that might be great for this role:

• You’re a very experienced designer who has taken some time off to raise kids or take care of a loved one and are looking for a soft entry way back into the workforce.
• You’re looking for a more lucrative full-time role but could use some cashflow in the meantime. Consider it a freelance gig until you find something else. I’m totally fine with working with someone who I know is looking elsewhere and/or will leave in a few months, especially if you’re the kind of professional who can ramp up.
• You run or work for an agency that has retainers or subscription plans around my price range.
• You’re a budding entrepreneur who sees a worthwhile investment in working with someone like me to see how I run my businesses. The financial compensation is lower than you’d like, but you see other forms of compensation as just-as or even more valuable to you.
• You’re confident about doing the work in a portion of your week, whether that’s moonlighting or you’re a stay-at-home parent with ample time to spare or something like that.

What’s next?

Phew! That’s a lot. Thanks for reading. If you made it this far, I hope that means we might be aligned in working together.

What’s next? Over the next week, put together a portfolio and message for me that shows that you have the skills and experience to do what I’m hiring for.

I’ll share the link to apply next Friday, October 4 at 10am Eastern.

Reply to this post if there are any additional questions I can answer for you.

If you think you might apply, you’re welcome to reply to this post to let me know that. I can look out for your name once the applications are open.

Thanks!

—Dan