Product Designer, Forward Networks

$130-140k

Sketch
Figma
Mid and Senior level
San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in Santa Clara, CA

Forward Networks

Mathematically-accurate network modeling

Open for applications

Forward Networks

Mathematically-accurate network modeling

101-200 employees

B2BSecurityEnterpriseSaaSAPI

Open for applications

$130-140k

Sketch
Figma
Mid and Senior level
San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in Santa Clara, CA

101-200 employees

B2BSecurityEnterpriseSaaSAPI

Company mission

Forward's mission is to transform networks to be agile, predictable, and secure.

Role

Who you are

  • Four (4) or more years of experience in user research, product design, user experience design, interaction design, information architecture, or a similar role
  • The ability to solve complex design problems that require alignment with a wide array of stakeholders (Product Management, Sales, Engineering, Customer Success)
  • Ability to explore widely different ideas and narrow them down based on user insights
  • Expert in UX design processes and methods
  • Ability to work within an established design system, but comfortable pushing the framework to its limits
  • Solid understanding of research methodology, capturing insights, and applying empathy to the product design process
  • Experience with designing highly interactive web or desktop applications
  • Mastery in design tools like Figma or Sketch
  • A portfolio and samples of work demonstrating a background creating great user-centered, customer-focused design solutions
  • Strong verbal communication and presentation skills
  • Bachelor’s degree in UX Design, Visual / Graphic Design, Human Computer Interaction, Human Factors, or related field of study

Desirable

  • Experience with implementing ADA/WCAG-compliant designs
  • Experience working in the network/IT infrastructure space
  • Experience working on enterprise (B2B) products

What the job involves

  • Our flagship product, Forward Enterprise, is a web application that brings a consumer-like design approach to interacting with network behavior data
  • We are looking for someone who loves UX, from user research via fast-paced prototyping, through information architecture and intuitive interface design, to bringing the design to the final product
  • You’ll be responsible for translating requirements from Product Management into elegant user experiences that our engineers can implement
  • You will leverage the full range of your design skills, including user research, interaction design, and visual design
  • You’ll work closely with our Product and Engineering teams to build new features from our product roadmap, and improve existing features, based on user feedback and competitive analysis, using various design and prototyping tools
  • Design experiences that satisfy our customers’ requirements
  • Continually ensure that UX goals are aligned with the broader business goals
  • Distill complex network engineering problems and use cases into intuitive and compelling interactive experiences that engage our users
  • Conduct customer and user research, including interviews, surveys, concept testing and usability studies
  • Create customer journeys, conceptual diagrams, wireframes, and prototypes
  • Collaborate with Product Management and Engineering to ensure business and technical needs are met, while maintaining a strong focus on the user experience
  • Define, track, and analyze metrics that are used to make measurable improvements to the product

Our take

Business has become increasingly complicated. The rapid flow of data from inside and outside the organisation has rendered top-down planning difficult and often ineffective especially in an enterprise network setting. Forward Networks provides a solution with a digital twin, creating an accurate copy of a company's network architecture so planners and developers can see how their activities will affect operations across the entire network.

Although digital twinning is a relatively new concept, made possible only by recent advances in AI, there is already intense competition for this space. Forward Networks has carved out a unique niche in focusing on enterprise networks rather than the organisation as a whole, a focus which is needed given the complexity of modern hybrid networks which can span several cloud environments. This has led to Forward Networks picking up major clients such as Tesltra, Paypal, and Ubisoft.

In 2023, Forward Networks completed a Series D funding round led by MSD Partners, with participation from Goldman Sachs, one of its long-term customers. This investment will help develop its product, expand the services available to its customers, and scale its core team as business continues to grow.

Kirsty headshot

Kirsty

Company Specialist

Insights

Top investors

Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

95% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)

Jan 2023

$50m

SERIES D

Oct 2019

$35m

SERIES C

Total funding: $112.5m

Company benefits

  • We’re an agile team and early-stage company with plenty of opportunities to grow, as a company and as individuals.
  • Every team member receives a compensation package that includes equity, so we can grow together.
  • We offer top-grade insurance, with medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family.
  • Vacations, holidays, family days. With no tracked time off, you can go as long as it’s okay with your manager.

Company HQ

Santa Clara, CA

Leadership

David Erickson

(Co-Founder & CEO)

David holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford. He is a contributor to the OpenFlow spec and the author of Beacon, the OpenFlow controller at the core of commercial products from Big Switch Networks, Cisco, and others, and open source controllers such as Floodlight and OpenDaylight.

Brandon Heller

(Co-Founder & CTO)

Brandon received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford. Involved in OpenFlow before it had that name, he served as main editor of the spec for three years, seeing it grow from an academic prototype to a real tool for industry. His more recent projects include energy-efficient data centers (ElasticTree) and flexible network emulation (Mininet).

Nikhil Handigol

(Co-Founder)

Nikhil is a Computer Science PhD from Stanford. As a member of the Stanford team that pioneered SDN/OpenFlow, his research focused on using SDN principles for systematic network troubleshooting (NetSight), flexible network emulation (Mininet), and smart load-balancing (Aster*x). Previously, he worked at SDN Academy, ON.Lab, and Cisco.

Peyman Kazemian

(Co-Founder)

Peyman received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. His dissertation showed novel ways to troubleshoot and verify the correctness of networks. Previously, he created and taught SDN Academy courses, worked at Google and Ericsson, and was part of the team at Stanford that developed OpenFlow and SDN.

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