Design Engineer

Old Toronto, ON, Canada

Koru is a first of its kind venture studio funded by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. We partner with OTPP portfolio companies to build and invest in businesses with a clear right to win.

Founded in 2019, our mission is to drive value creation aimed at growing the overall value of OTPP’s portfolio companies by partnering with them to identify, validate, build and oversee new disruptive businesses. We go from 0-1, building ventures that address customer frictions head-on — and we leverage our corporate partnerships to gain unfair advantages in the market.

We offer a unique balance of risk and reward where startup talent can build with the backing of a $250B pension plan and the ability to impact portfolio companies all around the world, explore disruptive new opportunities and share in the upside of every business we put into the market. We promote a truly entrepreneurial mindset and a culture of fearless reinvention.

You will have a unique opportunity to be exposed to a wide array of industries, and be a vital voice when it comes to your particular role, but also various areas of the businesses you’ll launch. Since 2019, we’ve launched 9 ventures across a broad array of industries and problem spaces. Take a look at our portfolio of ventures to see for yourself.

If you get excited by building innovative products that allow new entrants to disrupt existing industries, enjoy working in a collaborative and dynamic startup environment, have an entrepreneurial spirit, and have developed strong product leadership chops, then your place may be with us!

As a Design Engineer you will:

Play a hybrid role, pairing strong design sense with the ability to build and deploy to rapidly validate and prototype new product concepts;

Be a hybrid of a good designer who can also do predominately front-end Web development;

Work closely with various stakeholders, including Product Managers, User Researchers, and Software Engineers to help evolve ideas from low-fidelity wireframes into fully realized designs and prototypes (i.e. early Web proofs of concept / minimum viable products);

Be scrappy and bring your ingenuity! Experiment, fail fast, and share your technical solutions and product ideas with a cross-functional team;

Be comfortable working closely with customers - you’ll get inside the heads of end users to really understand what they value and how to tune our product(s) for the things that matter most to them;

Be self-directed; as part of a venture team, you’ll use your particular skills to help us keep pushing the venture forward;

Enjoy working in a diverse, dynamic, collaborative, transparent, environment where everyone's ideas and opinions are equally valued.

You should have:

A strong understanding of visual and interaction design, as well as usability testing

Proficient in user interface design best practices, accessibility and trends;

The technical capability to write the code to complete the front-end development, including some basic back-end development (e.g. save data in a SQL database, call an API end-point, etc.);

Workplace experience with developing in: HTML, CSS, JS, React (or similar), SQL, REST, APIs, HTTP, JSON, Python or Node (or similar), Git(Hub), etc.;

Proficiency with UI/UX design tools such as: Figma, InVision, Adobe, Webflow, or similar;

A minimum of 5 to 7 years hands-on professional experience designing / developing Web Apps & SaaS;

Hands-on experience with rapid prototyping tools, frameworks & approaches;

Business acumen, an entrepreneurial mindset, and feel comfortable navigating ambiguity;

An ability to embrace and reduce uncertainty through continual validated learning;

Strong communication skills to convey technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

It’d be nice if you have:

Examples of apps you’ve designed/built that showcase both front-end and back-end development contributions;

A track record of building successful digital products from scratch in a startup environment or web agency (0-1).

It’s a bonus is you have:

Had exposure to connecting to big data, AI and ML powered platforms (connecting to web services via APIs);

Experience with native or hybrid mobile development (e.g. iOS, Android, ionic).

What happens next?

Once we review your application, if we’d like to move you forward in the process, here’s what you can expect:

Step 1: Introductory Interview (30 minutes)

Step 2: 1:1 Interview w/someone in the same cohort (30 minutes)

Step 3: Practical Challenge ( ~3-4 hours preparation + 60 minute panel interview)

Step 4: 2-3 2:1 Team Interviews (30-45 minutes each)

Step 5: Hiring team conducts a Candidate Debrief

Step 6: Offer

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Diversity of perspectives and experience is at the core of how we approach disruption and innovation. We believe in fostering an environment where team members of all backgrounds can feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work every day. We aim to ensure all of our employees work in an environment that makes them feel valued, heard and supported while they strive towards career pursuits and their personal and professional growth.

We are committed to providing accommodations for all candidates that require them and in all aspects of the recruitment, selection, and/or assessment process. If you are selected to participate in any part of the selection and/or assessment process, please inform us of any accommodation(s) that you may require.

Koru’s offices are located in downtown Toronto. We humbly acknowledge that Koru HQ is located on land that is the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, Chippewa (Anishinaabeg), Haudenosaunee, and Wendat. This territory is covered by the ‘Toronto Purchase: Treaty 13’ which was the surrender of the lands from the Mississaugas of the Credit to the British Crown initially in 1787.

Koru staff and/or board members are made up of settlers, immigrants, descendants of immigrants, or a combination thereof. Our roots lie in continents across the world and we are grateful for the opportunity to share this land where we work and live.

Please note that this role is hybrid and requires the selected candidate to travel to Koru HQ in Toronto, Ontario as and when required by the company. Additionally, all individuals considered for this role are required to be legally eligible to work in Canada.

We’re flattered that you’d like to join our team, but only applicants selected to proceed in the hiring process will be contacted.

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