Product Design Manager (Group Lead)

Ferocia; Melbourne; On-site; AUD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous leave and parental policies

Flexibility and autonomy over time

CBD office with rooftop gym and PT

Budget for personal development,培训 and

conferences

Employee Assistance Program

Home loan rebates (conditions apply)

Ongoing bonus and equity grants (cond.

Job summary

Ferocia in Melbourne seeks a senior designer to lead design for two teams, acting as a player‑coach with strategic vision and hands‑on craft. You’ll manage two Senior Product Designers, set quality standards, and drive opportunities across product areas.

You’ll balance strategy with execution, shape roadmaps with leadership, and mentor a growing team in a fast‑paced, startup‑like environment with autonomy over how work gets done.

Qualifications

• Experience leading and delivering major projects with 8+ years in product teams or digital agencies.
• People leadership experience mentoring or managing designers.
• Strong interaction and visual design craft with emphasis on user emotion.
• Ability to translate customer needs into end-to-end product opportunities.
• Excellent collaboration, communication, and storytelling to influence decisions.
• Comfort with agile processes and front-end technical awareness.

Responsibilities

• Define design direction and roadmap in partnership with senior leadership and PMs.
• Frame strategy, context, and rationale behind design work for teams.
• Mentor and grow designers, ensure high-quality, high‑craft outputs.
• Create high‑fidelity designs and prototypes for high‑impact projects.
• Identify future roles and lead hiring across the design team.
• Shape design org culture, processes, and cross‑functional alignment.
• Collaborate with Brand, Marketing, and Support for consistent experiences.

Skills

Design leadership

Stakeholder management

Product strategy

User research

UI/UX design

Job description

About Ferocia

Ferocia is a team of more than 300 people building better financial experiences for Australians.

As the digital division of Bendigo Bank, our work spans Up, a digital bank; Connect, the platform powering Bendigo Bank’s web and mobile banking; and tools that make managing money simpler and help protect people from scams and fraud.

Our shared purpose: helping people feel more confident and in control of their money.

Sound like something you’d like to be part of? We’d love to hear from you.

The role

This is a rare opportunity to join a small team and have a real impact on people’s lives by helping Australians build savings habits and feel in control of their home ownership journey.

We’re looking for an experienced designer to lead design for 2 of our teams. It’s a player-coach role: part strategic Principal Product Designer, part Design Manager. You’ll frame the direction and future opportunities for these areas while supporting and managing the 2 Senior Product Designers embedded in the engineering teams. You will own the quality bar, and stay close enough to the craft to lift the experience yourself.

You’ll wear many hats, balancing strategy with execution. On a typical day you could be:

• Leading the vision: defining the design direction and future experience for your areas, and contributing to strategy and roadmaps alongside the Head of Design, Head of Product/PMs and Engineering Director/EMs.

• Setting the context: translating company and product strategy for your team, framing the why and how behind the work, and holding the balance between detail and big picture.

• Coaching the team: mentoring and supporting your designers so they grow, and making sure the team ships high‑craft work efficiently.

• Designing: producing high‑fidelity designs and prototypes for the largest, highest‑impact projects.

• Building the team: identifying future roles based on workload and priorities, and leading the hiring process.

• Shaping the design org: working with the Design Leadership Team on culture, strategy, shared processes and org‑level problems.

• Joining the dots: working with Brand, Marketing and Support so the experience is consistent across every touchpoint.

What we’re looking for

• Experience leading and successfully delivering major projects - with at least 8 years working with product teams (ideally on a SaaS or consumer product, and even better if it’s in Fin‑Tech), or within a digital agency.

• People leadership experience - having successfully mentored or managed a small team of designers.

• Creativity and craftsmanship - strong interaction and visual skills. We really pride ourselves in the way we present experiences and the emotional responses we seek from our users.

• Problem solving skills and a strong product lens - the ability to understand customer needs, motivations and behaviours, and to know how to translate this understanding into product opportunities. Being able to think holistically about end to end experiences, and design solutions that fit into a complex ecosystem.

• Collaboration and communication skills - the ability to articulate ideas effectively and provide sound reasoning for decisions, and to use storytelling to inform and influence.

• Passion - harder to define, but we’re looking for people who have a desire to push the limits, break the status quo, and be at the forefront of where technology is leading us. An eagerness to learn, expand your skills, and do the best work possible.

• Technical knowledge, especially front‑end, and a solid understanding of an agile engineering development process. Comfortable with complex technical problems.

• Ability to work with a certain level of ambiguity, and “get shit done” autonomously - we operate like a start‑up and things can often be messy, undefined, or change at the last minute. We’re looking for someone who enjoys innovative fast paced work environments and tackling all sort of problems.

Interview process

More details will be provided on application, but all applicants will go through the same stages:

1. Intro chat and career review with Sylvain (Head of Design) — 30min

2. Presentation of case studies for a deep dive into your work and your design skill. With Sylvain (Head of Design) and 2 Product Design Managers — 60min

3. Presentation of case studies focused on strategic shaping and leadership skills. With a Design Manager, a Senior Designer, and a PM — 60min

4. Interview focused on leadership and management experience with Head of Product and General Manager.

5. References check

6. Offer

Working at Ferocia

We work flexibly, with genuine autonomy over where and when you do your best work. Ferocians can use our Melbourne CBD office as much or as little as makes sense for them.

We also value spending time together face to face, with teams making time to meet in person when it matters. That’s why we’re currently only hiring people based in Naarm/Melbourne and surrounding areas.

Here’s some of what you can expect:

• Smart, passionate people who care about what they make.

• Generous leave and parental policies.

• Flexibility and genuine autonomy over your time.

• A great CBD office with a rooftop, gym and personal trainer.

• A budget for personal development, training and conferences.

• An Employee Assistance Program.

• Home loan rebates (conditions apply).

• Ongoing bonus and equity grants (conditions apply).

Unsure if you tick every box? Throw your hat in the ring anyway. We value different experiences and perspectives, so we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every requirement. You might be just who we’re looking for.