User Experience (UX) Designer

Job Summary

The Product Group at Sports Reference LLC is seeking a User Experience (UX) Designer to help us build new products and features that empower users to enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love. We currently serve 20 million (and growing) monthly users through our free, ad-supported Reference sites (Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, FBref.com, etc.) and Stathead.com, our SaaS offering that provides powerful search and filtering capabilities for deeper exploration of our vast databases. In 2023, we acquired ImmaculateGrid.com, the viral baseball trivia game, and have since launched ad-supported grid games for basketball, football, hockey, and soccer. Now, we need a creative, research-focused, and outcome-driven designer to help us build our next generation of subscription products.

To Apply

Please visit our jobs website at https://sports-reference-llc.breezy.hr/ and submit your resume and a cover letter for this position. Also, as a postscript (p.s.) to your cover letter, please tell us your favorite sports team logo to demonstrate that you read the job description.

We will begin the phone interview process the week of October 28th. Applications arriving after this date will be collected but will receive consideration at the discretion of the hiring manager based on the progress we have made in filling the position. We have provided a general outline of our interview process here: https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html

Our Purpose and Values

We democratize data, so our users enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love.

We value:

• Respect for our users, the athletes we cover, and our team;
• Craftsmanship in building tools and products
• Reliable tools and services that meet our users' needs every day; and
• Data democratization. We publish many data sets for emerging and underserved sports. For instance, the New York Times covered our recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues in the summer of 2021.

To meet these expectations, we encourage team members to participate in company discussions and share new ideas, features or potential solutions to problems.

Background

Many users visit our sites frequently, often daily, driven by a wide range of behaviors and interests. Our current subscription product, Stathead, meets the needs of only a small portion of these behaviors. We aim to identify, develop, and launch new subscription products that will enhance the sports fan experience for a broader range of user needs.

As a UX Designer, you will play a crucial role in understanding the diverse behaviors and motivations of our users. You'll collaborate with cross-functional teams to design intuitive and engaging experiences that appeal to a wider range of sports fans. By applying user research, data insights, and user-centered design, you will help shape new subscription products that will significantly expand and elevate the fan experience across our platforms.

Our guiding philosophy for visual design and user experience is “aggressively functional.” We aim to balance an extensive repository of sports data with an interface that is fast, easy to navigate, and accessible to all, encouraging exploration. Users should quickly find exactly what they’re looking for, while also discovering additional content and tools that enrich and deepen their experience.

If you find this philosophy inspiring rather than limiting, you would love working here. This role puts a primary focus on the user’s jobs to be done. While visuals may be secondary, they are not forgotten. As the Shaker design philosophy states: “Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.” From a design perspective, we draw more inspiration from Wikipedia than we do from most other sports sites.

User experience design at Sports Reference has traditionally been performed by a single person—our Executive Director of Design & Product Management, to whom you will report. In this new role, you will be the only dedicated designer on the team, but you’ll collaborate closely with product managers, UX researchers, and teams across Engineering, Marketing, and Data.

Goals and Tasks for Your First Year (In rough order of importance)

Must-Reach Goals and Tasks

• ​​Develop a deep understanding of our products, the users who rely on them, and the behaviors they exhibit when using our products.
• Design, build, and test prototypes in line with our “aggressively functional” design ethos for multiple features that will become a part of our subscription bundle.
• Work closely with our UX researcher to recruit for, plan, conduct, and synthesize user research studies. Present actionable insights to the Product group and larger team.
• Be an active member of our Product group. Regularly participate in meetings, workshops, exercises, and other team rituals.
• Develop strong working relationships with all other teams at Sports Reference (Engineering, Marketing, Data, and Operations and Strategic Planning) while 100% remote.
• Become comfortable using our product analytics tools to gain insight into user behavior (currently a mix of GA4 and custom dashboards).
• Regularly track and report progress on key user experience metrics, such as Google’s Core Web Vitals and accessibility rating.
• Transition our design process to more modern tooling (such as Figma).

Nice-to-Reach Goals and Tasks

• Work with the Executive Director of Design & Product Management on goals for a future visual design refresh. This role focuses more on UX design than UI design. Strong UI design skills would be seen as a bonus.

Expectations

• Complete projects related to company objectives as time and skills allow.
• Continue your ongoing professional development, which we will support.

Qualifications and Skills

A qualified candidate will satisfy the following:

• Proven experience in designing for user engagement. Experience working on products such as software-as-a-service (SaaS), e-commerce, or subscription-based services will be considered a bonus.
• Comfort incorporating user research into the design process, using insights to inform design decisions and improve the user experience.
• Have a history of getting things done (and done well).
• Evidence that you are capable of meeting many of the goals listed above.
• If you don’t think your application will have evidence that you can meet all of the "nice-to-reach goals and tasks" above but still are interested in the job and otherwise qualify, please apply. Nobody checks every box—we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

Salary

​​Salary range starting at $88k for U.S.-based employees. We are a remote-first company and determine our pay range for this position based on the market rates for Philadelphia, our home base. The salary offered will be based on your experience and skill level.

For candidates outside of the United States, we will calculate a local market rate based on pay for comparable positions in that market and comparable benefits packages when possible. While we are open to candidates outside the continental United States, we prefer someone who resides in a time zone that aligns with continental US working hours.

Annual bonuses are variable and are tied to a percentage of the company's end of year profits and the employee's time worked and salary earned during the year. In the last three years, they have averaged 15% of annual salary.

Benefits

Even though we are a small company, Sports Reference has a generous benefits package.

• The total value of our benefits package is up to $30,000.
• We cover full health and dental insurance costs for full-time employees and their dependent children. We cover 70%-80% of plans for an entire family.
• We have a 401k with a match on your contributions up to 4% of your base salary. The 401k has many low cost investing options.
• We pay all premiums for company-sponsored life and long-term disability insurance for all employees.
• We provide up to $7,000/year in continuing education benefits.
• Even if you live in or near Philly, you have the option to work remotely as much as you choose. We generally work a standard workday, but with flexibility to flex hours within that framework.
• Any parent welcoming a new child to their family is entitled to 13 weeks of fully paid leave, and up to an additional 39 weeks at half-time.
• Employees begin with 18 days of PTO per year and an additional 8 paid company holidays and accrue sick leave at the rate of one day per month.
• We will generally buy you whatever equipment will make you the most productive.
• We typically will pay for reasonable moving-related expenses related to your acceptance of a position with Sports Reference. Please ask if you have any questions related to this benefit.
• We provide a $53.50/month remote work stipend to cover the cost of internet access and incidental expenses.
• For employees outside of the United States, we will work to provide equivalent benefits or additional compensation.

Other Information

• Sports Reference's first site was launched in 2000. We have bootstrapped ourselves to 40 full-time employees and have no venture capital backing.
• We are willing to provide accommodations for candidates for whom the timing or structure of our interview process may be challenging. This may include early morning or evening interview times or provide payment to cover child care expenses if needed. If you are applying for a role where verbal communication is not a significant requirement, we may consider an alternative form of interview as is reasonably possible and suitable. Similarly if an extended period of internet connectivity is a challenge, we may consider an alternate form of interview. If we invite you to interview, please let us know of any possibly necessary accommodations.
• Our typical interview process is described at https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html
• Sports Reference is a remote-first company. Sports Reference is located in Philadelphia and non-Philadelphia candidates will be considered on an equal footing to those who are local. Presently, all Sports Reference employees are working remotely at least some of the time, but those in the Philly area may work from the office on days of their choosing.
• This is a full-time position.
• Employment at Sports Reference LLC is at-will and this position is an at-will appointment.
• Applicants are preferred to have a legal right to work in the United States. Please let us know in your application if you do not have the right to work in the United States.
• We have been a corporate sponsor of Women in Sports Tech.
• 100% of our merchandise sales support youth sports.

Sports Reference is a growing company, and your work will be highly visible and have a definite and immediate impact (Read about us in the New York Times and The Athletic ($)). We reach over 20 million users each month and served over 2.0 billion pages in 2023.

Sports Reference provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship status, civil union status, color, discrimination, domestic partnership status, domestic violence victim status, familial status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, gender transition, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, marriage to a co-worker, mental or physical disability or illness, military service, military and veteran status, national origin (including physical, cultural, or linguistic characteristics), nationality, parental leave, pregnancy (including childbirth, breastfeeding or medical or common conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth), race (including traits that are historically associated with race, such as hair texture and protective hairstyles, including braids, locks and twists), religion, retaliation, sexual harassment, sexual or affectional orientation (actual or perceived, whether or not traditionally associated with the person’s designated sex at birth), status with regard to public assistance, transgender identity, unfavorable discharge of military status (less than “honorable” but not “dishonorable”), or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws and ordinances, or on the basis of sports franchise preferences.

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