Cross-functional Collaboration & Feedback

Designers at Harness are key strategic partners. During your interviews, you will meet with product managers and engineers who want to understand how you handle the realities of shipping software in a fast-moving enterprise environment.

Be ready to go over:

• Handling Critique – Receiving feedback constructively and using it to iterate and improve your designs.
• Engineering Hand-off – Preparing clear specifications, redlines, and interactive prototypes to ensure high-fidelity implementation.
• Influencing Product Direction – Using user research and design principles to advocate for the user and influence the product roadmap.

Example scenarios:

• Describing a time you had to simplify a design because of engineering resource constraints without sacrificing the core user experience.
• Explaining how you aligned a diverse group of stakeholders who had conflicting opinions on a product's design direction.
• Detail how you partnered with engineering to QA and polish UI elements before a major product launch.

As a UX/UI Designer at Harness, your day-to-day work will bridge the gap between complex engineering capabilities and intuitive, delightful user experiences. You will be embedded within a product team, working closely with product management and engineering to bring new features and platform improvements to life.

Your primary responsibilities will include:

• Designing End-to-End Experiences: You will own the design process from initial research and wireframing through high-fidelity UI design, prototyping, and developer hand-off.
• Translating Technical Workflows: You will collaborate with product managers to understand highly technical developer tools and translate them into logical, accessible user flows.
• User Research & Usability Testing: You will conduct research sessions with developers and system administrators to gather feedback, validate concepts, and uncover deep usability insights.
• Evolving the Design System: You will actively use, maintain, and contribute to Harness's centralized design system, ensuring visual and functional consistency across all product modules.
• Collaborating with Engineering: You will work hand-in-hand with frontend engineers to ensure your designs are technically feasible and implemented to the highest standard of visual and functional quality.

To be successful in this role, you need a strong foundation in modern design methodologies, a portfolio that demonstrates your ability to solve complex problems, and the communication skills required to thrive in a collaborative environment.

Must-Have Qualifications

• Proven Experience: A strong portfolio demonstrating your experience designing complex B2B SaaS applications, enterprise platforms, or developer-focused tools.
• Design Craft: Exceptional skills in interaction design, visual design, information architecture, and prototyping using modern tools like Figma.
• Systems Thinking: The ability to understand complex, interconnected product ecosystems and design scalable components and workflows.
• Collaboration Skills: Experience partnering closely with product managers and software engineers throughout the entire product development lifecycle.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate design decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Technical Familiarity: A basic understanding of modern software development practices, CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, or coding concepts.
• Research Experience: Experience planning, conducting, and synthesizing qualitative user research and usability testing independently.
• Design System Management: Experience building, scaling, or contributing to an enterprise-level design system.

Q: How technical do I need to be to design for Harness? A: While you do not need to know how to code, you must possess a strong curiosity and willingness to learn about technical domains. You will be designing for developers and DevOps engineers, so being comfortable learning about CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, and developer workflows is essential to creating successful designs.

Q: What is the typical timeline for the Harness interview process? A: The process generally moves smoothly and can take anywhere from three to six weeks from the initial recruiter screen to a final decision. However, timeline speeds can vary based on the specific team's hiring volume and candidate location. Keeping proactive, open communication with your recruiter is highly recommended.

Q: What is the company's design culture like? A: The design culture at Harness is highly collaborative, open, and respected. Designers are viewed as strategic partners who work alongside product and engineering. The design team itself is highly supportive, and panel members in interviews are genuinely eager to learn from your unique experiences and perspectives.

Q: Does Harness support remote or hybrid work for designers? A: Harness offers a mix of remote, hybrid, and in-office opportunities depending on the specific role, team, and geographic location. Be sure to clarify the exact expectations for your target location with your recruiter during your initial screening call.

To maximize your chances of success, keep these practical, insider tips in mind as you prepare for your interviews:

• Focus on the "Why": When presenting your portfolio, do not just show the final high-fidelity screens. Spend time explaining the problem, the constraints you faced, the alternatives you explored, and why you made specific design decisions.
• Know Your Audience: Remember that Harness builds tools for developers. Showing that you understand or are eager to learn about developer personas, mental models, and pain points will make a strong impression on the hiring panel.
• Showcase Collaboration: Highlight instances where you partnered with engineers to overcome technical limitations. This demonstrates that you are a pragmatic designer who knows how to get high-quality designs shipped.
• Be Prepared for Ambiguity: Enterprise software design is often ambiguous. Share examples of how you took a vague concept, structured a plan to understand it, and turned it into a concrete, successful design solution.

• Ask Thoughtful Questions: Use your time at the end of interviews to ask insightful questions about the team's design processes, how they prioritize projects, and how they collaborate with product and engineering. This shows your engagement and helps you assess if the team is a good fit for you.

Preparing for a UX/UI Designer role at Harness is an exciting opportunity to showcase your design craft, strategic thinking, and ability to solve complex, real-world problems. By focusing your preparation on your portfolio presentation, interaction design systems, and cross-functional collaboration, you will position yourself as a strong candidate who can make an immediate impact on the product and the user community.

Approach your interviews with confidence, curiosity, and a collaborative mindset. The panel members at Harness are excited to meet you, hear your story, and learn from your unique design journey. With focused preparation, you can successfully navigate the interview loop and take the next step in your career.

The salary information above highlights the competitive compensation packages offered for design roles. When evaluating these numbers, consider that total compensation at Harness often includes a combination of base salary, performance bonuses, and equity options. Your specific offer will depend on your experience level, design expertise, and the geographic location of the role. For more detailed salary data and candidate experiences, you can explore additional resources on Dataford.