Product Design Lead

About the Role:
This role takes ownership of product design as a function: the standard, the system, the process, and the people, starting with the designer. This hands-on role requires you to design as much as you direct, working closely with a small team. You will set the bar for design quality by doing the work, reviewing everything that ships, and building a cohesive design system and practices that allow the product to move faster without losing coherence.
We are looking for a designer who can quickly turn a problem into a working, clickable version using AI design and prototyping tools alongside Figma. You'll be comfortable collaborating directly with engineers on actual implementation rather than solely delivering static screens.

What You Will Own:

• The Quality Bar: Define the standard for every customer-facing screen in a regulated financial product designed for first-time investors: clear, calm, trustworthy, and simple.
• The Design System: Build and maintain a unified design system across the mobile app, web, and internal tools in Figma, ensuring it aligns with engineering implementations and reduces redundancy.
• The People: Manage goals, feedback, growth, and regular one-on-one meetings. As the team expands, you will take part in hiring and shaping it.
• The Process: Establish and manage how design work is requested, prioritized, and delivered, ensuring product managers receive what they need without design becoming a bottleneck.
• Discovery and Prototyping: Develop clickable prototypes before the final specification, testing them with customers and your team to ground design decisions in evidence rather than opinion.
• Simplifying: Aim to continually remove redundant or inconsistent elements every quarter, prioritizing effective, functional designs.
• Regulated Flows: Design onboarding, KYC, disclosures, risk warnings, and consent processes in collaboration with compliance to create seamless user experiences.

How Product, Design, and Engineering Work Together:
Product and engineering operate as an integrated team under a unified planning model. Product managers work closely with small squads of engineers, and design serves as a shared resource. Weekly priorities and capacities are determined collaboratively, and every initiative is documented and designed prior to development. As Design Lead, you will participate in weekly forums, owning design capacity across squads and ensuring that design readiness meets engineering needs.

How We Expect You to Work:

• Demonstrate concepts through prototypes or marked-up screens rather than presentations about design principles.
• Stay close to the build by reviewing engineer implementations against designs and addressing discrepancies directly during discussions rather than through tickets.
• Record design decisions and their rationale for future reference to prevent redundant discussions.
• Maintain high standards in collaboration with product managers and engineers, as well as your own design team.
• Engage regularly with users and analyze product data using tools like Mixpanel and session recordings.

Qualifications:

Required:

• Three or more years in product design, including at least two years as the lead designer on a live consumer product, preferably in financial services or another regulated field.
• Evidence of impact through a product or flow you designed that shipped successfully, a design system you built or improved, and an existing feature you simplified or removed.
• Experience in managing or mentoring at least one designer.
• Proficient in Figma and current AI design and prototyping tools, with working prototypes to demonstrate.
• Fluency in Arabic and English, with strong skills in bilingual and right-to-left interface design.

Preferred:

• Experience in fintech, banking, or investment products within Saudi Arabia or the Gulf region.
• Sufficient front-end knowledge to read component code and engage in discussions about implementation trade-offs with engineers.
• Experience in conducting customer research and usability testing independently, without a dedicated research team.

Why Join?
You will have the opportunity to define the look, feel, and behavior of a product that manages real money for a large customer base while building the design function from the ground up. As part of a small team with high standards, the impact of your decisions will be evident to every customer using the app. If you aim to set high standards instead of inheriting them, this is the ideal role for you.