Director of Product Design

How You'll Make Impact:

• Product Design Directors are responsible for the design direction and vision for product areas and initiatives within a domain, working in partnership with GM Product Design, Principal Designers, Design Leadership Team and product and engineering leaders.
• You’ll support, contribute to and coordinate with the overall design direction of a global design team as well as providing local leadership for the team members in your office location. You’ll lead a group of passionate Lead Product Designer, Seniors Designers, Designers and in some cases Graduate Designers, supporting and growing their capabilities through design critique, mentorship and coaching. You’ll help define the standards and refine our design practice to drive operational excellence within your team and the delivery of consistent and beautiful product experiences for our customers.
• You’ll lead by example, contributing design solutions and deliverables. Partnering with Product GMs, and Engineering leaders for product areas within a portfolio, you’ll help define product strategy, promote the value of design and ensure quality of relationship and work product. You’ll build strong relationships with all parts of the business to help define viable approaches / methodologies in line with relevant industry standards and best practices.

What You'll Do:

• Work with the GM Product Design and other Product Design Directors to manage your product design team, programs and processes that support a world-class design team. Solve problems together and work as a team to influence and drive key strategic initiatives forward.
• Collaborate with others on the Design Leadership Team to continuously cultivate a vibrant team culture, work on strategies, problem solve and respond to team or organisational needs.
• Provide vision and enthusiasm, supporting your leads and designers to continuously challenge themselves and their work.
• Identify and prioritise future roles based on team workload, wellbeing, development and business priorities.
• Recruit, onboard and manage new Product Designers of all seniority. Provide direction, mentoring, coaching and feedback, enabling team members to hone their skills as designers, communicators and influencers, and deliver beautiful and meaningful experiences for customers.
• Partner with the operations team to manage logistical aspects like team budgets, training, and performance. Encourage and enable team members in their career development, identifying opportunities for them to grow and achieve their goals.
• Work with your team to ensure high quality outputs are delivered in a timely, efficient way to meet business objectives within your product areas or portfolio.
• Maintain standards and rigour across the practice, through product principles, process and systems.
• Align your team to the overall strategy of Design, Product, and Xero, collaborating with your peers across product portfolios to connect the dots, reviewing your team's performance, running design critique efforts and managing resource requests for your product areas or portfolio.
• Partner with the Principal Designer(s), the Design Leadership Team and Design Operations Leads to implement initiatives which help to continually evolve and grow our design practice.
• Introduce new technologies, techniques and design tools to improve performance and process.
• Encourage and support team members to collaborate effectively across Design, Research, Accessibility, Product, Engineering and Product Marketing to fulfill user needs and business objectives across your product areas or portfolio.
• Work with the GM Product Design in your portfolio to help define the design strategy and contribute to the product strategy for your product area, in partnership with the product leadership team. Help define the why and how behind products for your team and get teams working in a way that makes great products.
• Partner with peers across Product and Technology to define strategies and objectives, scope road maps, agree priorities and plan work programs to support high quality, high value outcomes.
• Contribute to Product visions, along with plans for evolutionary, iterative updates, that allow the Product vision to be realized over time in partnership with Product, Strategy and Technology.
• Collaborate with peers across other product areas to understand connections and opportunities to learn from what others have done, leverage each other's work or work in more efficient ways.
• Influence, help prioritize and focus the team on the most impactful work.
• Build strong collaborative partnerships with peers across Product and Engineering, promoting the value of design and advocating for design, research and accessibility.
• Work with Product peers to set timeframes and develop plans with the team, enabling them to work efficiently and deliver within agreed timeframes.

What Success Looks Like:

• You’re leading a thriving, productive and connected team of designers.
• You’re enabling your team to continually challenge themselves to grow and develop in their relationship skills, design expertise and career.
• You’re respected by your peers, the design team, and Product leaders.
• You’re helping improve and standardize the way we do things in the Design team.
• You’re collaborating and communicating well with all Xero colleagues, especially Design, Product and Engineering Leadership teams.