Variant A
Elaborate listing
One job, its full detail, filling the viewport.
Scope
StepStone Continental Europe was Europe's leading job platform, eighteen million monthly visits, six markets, a thousands-strong organisation. The product surface was wide. Listings, search, applications, employer dashboards, transactional email, mobile, SEO landing pages, and a brand that needed to stay consistent across all of it.
Two threads of my work there became, in retrospect, the ones worth telling.
Notifications, three jobs where there had been one
Lift interaction on the standardised emails StepStone sent its users. Job alerts, application updates, the daily and weekly nudges that bring people back to the platform.
The old email gave a single job its full detail, one listing filling the whole viewport. I designed the alternative: condensed listings, tighter rows, less per job, so more relevant roles fit above the fold of the email before anyone had to scroll. I built the variants; we put them head to head.
We A/B tested it the way StepStone tested everything, its primary method, run over two weeks. The condensed version won, clicked more, engagement up 25+% across markets. More of what users actually came back for, in a single email.
The system across six markets
The other thread was the StepStone design system. A single source of components, rules and assets that brand, product design, and front-end engineering all reached for, across six countries shipping in parallel at different cadences, with local variations on copy, currency, and legal structure baked in.
The work was governance: agreeing what stayed shared, what got local autonomy, what counted as a violation. One source held visual consistency, kept assets and rules available, and cut delivery and go-to-market time for brand and product across six countries at once.
Reflection
The version that won was the condensed one. The move wasn't to fight for more polish. It was to test honestly and respect the answer.
Design systems are discipline before they are deliverables. Six markets shipping from one source meant the work was agreement, governance, and the rules for variation. The components are the visible part. The system is the rest.