Hi I’m Devan, a designer at Method Financial.
I want you to know that I’ve written every word of what’s below. We have the opportunity to design an industry-defining company and create new paradigms, ideas, and feelings for how millions of Americans interact with their liabilities. We’re going to do so with a lean team of designers.
Total consumer debt in the United States is $18 trillion (T!). The average debt per American excluding mortgages is $23,000 with borrowers spending 30% of their monthly income paying off credit cards & loans.
At Method, we're building APIs to help these people manage and pay off that debt. We operate at the infrastructure level and work with fintechs to help them get real-time data and payment access to their users’ debts. We do this with as little as a name, phone number, and consent – no credentials. This is a giant leap forward in consumer account connectivity and one that is a paradigm shift from [the old way](https://stratechery.com/2020/visa-plaid-networks-and-jobs/#:~:text=Plaid gets around,of the time.).
Method was founded in 2021 and has since raised over $64M from Andreessen Horowitz, Emergence, Y-Combinator, Samsung and Truist. We're currently 44 people and growing faster than we can keep up.
We build for two groups of people – customers and end-users. Our customers are companies like SoFi, Robinhood, Bilt and others that use Method’s liability APIs. Our end-users are our customers’ customers –people like you and I. While end-users are not necessarily our customers, we believe they deserve the same level of attention and care as our customers do.
We're an 8 person EPD team (7 engineers, 1 designer) coming from Google, Meta, Palantir, Affirm, Replit and a handful of startups. Half of us are based in NYC and the other half in Austin. All of us come together for a few days at least once a quarter, usually somewhere enjoyable like The Hamptons, Las Vegas or Miami.
The way we collaborate and build products is still very much fluid. We think this is great because it means you can have an outsized impact in molding and defining our identity as a team.
We’re not quite sure “design engineer” is the right name for it.
We build APIs but also have a number of elements and products that have UIs. For example, our Connect API (end-user facing) has a UI. We also have The Method Dashboard, a UI that mirrors our API 1:1 and is used daily by customers. We have other UIs too, and we’re working on more that will be embedded in the largest fintech and non-fintech apps in the world.
We believe hiring a design engineer will help level up our products by an order of magnitude. Today, our UIs are missing character. This is not the result of lazy craftsmanship or lack of effort, but rather missing someone who biases towards thinking with their feelings and experiences.
Method's technology is magical. When consumers go through our Connect element for the first time, it's a "WTF, how did they do that" type of feeling. This can be a good-spooky feeling or a bad-spooky feeling, depending on design. For a company building APIs, design is incredibly important in Method's success and identity.
We’re looking for someone who can mock up pixel-perfect designs just as well as they can write clean and production-ready code. You will work alongside myself in defining what our existing and future UIs should look and feel like. The right person for this role is more front-end leaning than design leaning, but can do both equally as well. We know this is a lot to ask for, but we feel the right person in this role will do the best and most impactful work of their career here.
Some things you may agree with: