If you’re looking for the best creative companies to work for, Figma tends to rank high on the list.
Since its release in 2016, Figma became a worthy competitor to the Goliath Adobe. Until the news dropped in 2022: Adobe buys Figma for $20 million.
In that short time, Figma built an impressive community of raving fans:
Over 8000 designers joining Config 2023
4 million free and paid users approximately
Close to 400k followers on Twitter.
In this article, you will learn everything about Figma Careers:
- What is Figma?
- What are Figma Remote Policies and Hiring Locations?
- What is it like to work for Figma?
- What does Figma's hiring process look like for full-time hires and interns?
- What are Portfolio Tips from hiring managers at Figma?
- What does Figma's use case or exercises look like in the hiring process?
- What do Figma salaries look like?
- Current product design jobs opportunities at Figma
What is Figma?
Collaborative tools were in their infancy. Google Docs launched ten years back, but creative tools didn't make the leap. Our browsers weren't powerful enough. Adobe's offline tools such as Photoshop were dominating.
Before 2011, no browser allowed 3D display in the browser without a plugin. Crazy to think that today, we have countless collaborative software. On top of my head: Miro, Webflow, Canva,...
What changed everything was WebGL. When WebGL launched, it allowed you to display complex 3D graphic elements on your browser. The bulb lighted up when Evan, Figma's co-founder, played around with it and told Dylan:
"You know, we could use this thing to build creative tools in the browser".
5 years later, Figma was born to be an online, real-time, and collaborative design software used by 4+ million users. Design teams at Spotify, or Netflix use Figma to brainstorm, prototype, and ship faster than ever. And it doesn't stop at big companies. Figma powers a huge freelance ecosystem of designers.
It also doesn't stop at designers. Figma extended to anyone wanting to create: marketers, artists, engineers, copywriters & so on. One of Dylan's original visions was to make design accessible to all.
Key milestones that made a difference:
- Bringing design and code together with components
- Hosting the Config 23 biggest design conference
- Launching Figjam, an online whiteboard tool
And they're killing it again, announcing recently:
So are you ready to learn more about what Figma Careers look like? Let's go!
What are Figma Remote Policies and Hiring Locations?
Figma is a hybrid company operating in Europe, Asia Pacific, and North America.
Everyone has to choose whether they will associate with a hub or be remote.
The company has 7 remote hubs in Berlin, London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, Canada, and the US.
In 2022, Figma counts 800+ employees and organizes around 11 teams:
- Product
- Design
- Product Support
- Sales
- Marketing
- Engineering
- Talent
- People
- Business Development
- Business Operations
- Early Career (where cool internships happen!)
At the helm of the product and design teams; we have:
- Noah Levin, Head of Design
- Yuhki Yamashita, Head of Product
- Kris Rasmussen, CTO
The design teams counts 30+ employees organized around the following squads:
- The Editor
- FigJam
- Growth
- Teamwork
- Horizontals
What is it like to work at Figma?
If you're on the lookout for product design jobs opportunities, I'd recommend you take a look at Figma's blog, Shortcut. They share a lot of behind the scenes! Noah Levin, Head of Design, believes in open-sourcing himself and documents tons of things about building teams, remote culture, and team processes. Here is what I found about working at Figma.
They use Figma for everything, not only design
- The talent & people ops teams use Figjam for performance reviews or design career levels.
- The product management teams use FigJam for everything from brainstorms to retrospectives.
- The marketing team uses Figma to unify the brand and produce wireframes and mocks.
The weekly process in the design team looks like this
- Warm-Up: A light and fun meeting held every Monday to kick off the week.
- Team Meeting: To share team-wide responsibilities, strategic questions, and ways to support each other.
- Critique: Sessions where the design team provides feedback and support to each other on ongoing projects.
- Cooldown: A bi-weekly meeting to wrap up the week, play games, and reflect on the week.
- Lunch and Coffee: Unstructured time for team members to connect, relax, and bond.
They care about your education
Every new employee receives a copy of The Design of Everyday Things, and goes through a "Design 101 Workshop" led by design leadership. They also offer visual design training.
They care about your progression
They make sure you level up and leverage product design jobs opportunities at Figma with tracks like Figma's career levels. It takes into consideration your craft (design), communication skills, strategy, and impact.
What does Figma's hiring process look like for full-time hires and interns?
Figma's design hiring process is classic and like lots of tech companies. According to Noah Levin in this interview, the process takes place in three phases for full-time hires:
- Phone Screen: The goal is to get a sense of the work you would be doing at Figma, a quick portfolio review, and what you're interested in doing in your career. This step is the same whether Figma contacts you directly or if you apply.
- Phone chats and on-site interviews (at the different hubs): You'll meet 5 to 6 people from your team and do a presentation (more information on use cases below).
- Reference check & offer: If that goes well, Figma will certainly do a reference check and proceed to the offer.
For intern hiring, the main difference is that you won't have on-site interviews but mainly phone chats.
What are portfolio tips from hiring managers at Figma?
Portfolios are a super important part of the process, and your first "foot in the door” if you want a design career at Figma.
Sara Culver, Manager Design at Figma, recommends to:
- Focus on quality, rather than quantity. It means picking up work showcasing the full journey of product development, a project you shipped (as an employee or student). Make sure you pick only 2 or 3.
- When you get to the case study part, make sure you give context around the project: who was involved, the timeline, the constraints, and the goals. Indeed, you will be evaluated according to these criteria too. It is an opportunity to show the skills you contributed to the project.
- Showcase the output. Just like a before / after, with visual designs and focus on the part you are most proud of. It is also okay to talk about things that went wrong and how you approached them.
- Show exploration. How did you end up with these ideas? How did you get there? What was your process as a designer?
- Make it easy to navigate!
Resource to help you out:
Design Hiring 101
An example of a portfolio that was hired by Figma
Another design portfolio example
What does Figma's use case or exercises look like in the hiring process?
In a hiring process, you usually have an important step to showcase your skills. It is either a take-home exercise or a live use case with the team.
Noah Levin ensures that they don't do take-home exercises, since portfolios are enough for designers. Those exercises are relevant only if you don't have enough work to show in your portfolio, or for writing jobs.
What they do, however, are Jam Sessions. These would happen during a phone call or on-site interviews and consist in:
- A critique (or a "live" use case): Take an existing product and poke at it together. What works and what doesn't? Hopefully, it's a fun chance to see what it feels like to work together.
- A Creative Exercise (45 minutes): Take something that doesn't exist, and figure out the landscape, the design statement and a solution. It could be something like "Help us design an experience for a digital bus stop".
A tip from Noah Levin on this one is to step back, pause and ask "What problem are we trying to solve here?". Don't be scared to ask interviewers questions, it is actually better to do so.
The goal of “live” exercises like this is to mimic what would happen in a real-life team, with product managers and engineers challenging you every day!
Keep in mind that your portfolio will weigh more in the hiring decision than the use case.
A resource to help you out: Solving Product Design Exercises from Artiom Dashinsky.
What do Figma salaries look like?
According to salaries shared on job descriptions, the average compensations at Figma are:
If based in San Francisco or New York Hub, the annual base salary range of a Senior/Manager Product is $175K to $308K USD.
If based in San Francisco or New York Hub, the annual base salary range of a Product Designer is $131K to $308K USD.
(updated in 8/03/2023)
Ready to apply and find product manager, or product design jobs at Figma?
