Director of Design

Remote Jobs; Remote; CAD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading webnovel platform is seeking a Director of Design to establish a clear design vision and lead their design organization. This role involves mentoring a team, defining design direction, and ensuring user-centered practices that enhance the overall user experience. The ideal candidate will have a strong design perspective, proven team leadership experience, and the ability to influence product direction through design. This full-time role offers a competitive salary range of CAD $170,000 - $210,000 and various benefits.

Benefits

Career development and mentorship

Top industry health benefits

Health/wellness account

Generous vacation policy

Corporate gym discounts

Flexible work location

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and scaling design teams in a product driven organization.
• Strong design point of view with the ability to set direction and make hard tradeoffs.
• Deep experience shaping end-to-end product experiences across multiple surfaces.
• Ability to move fluidly between strategy and hands on execution.
• Track record of influencing product direction through design narrative and user insight.
• Passion for designing for real human needs, delight, and emotional resonance.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the design organization.
• Set the design vision and strategy.
• Actively contribute to high-impact initiatives.
• Champion user-centred practices.
• Collaborate and influence across the organization.

Skills

Leadership skills

Design expertise

Cross-functional collaboration

User-centered design

Mentoring abilities

Strategic thinking

Job description

Overview

Wattpad's vision is to entertain and connect the world through stories. A leading global webnovel platform, Wattpad has democratized storytelling for a new generation of diverse Gen Z writers and their fans. Wattpad is part of WEBTOON Entertainment's IP & Creator Ecosystem, where approximately 155 million monthly active users discover incredible stories in multiple formats. Come build the future of entertainment and storytelling with our global team, and write your next chapter with us!

Wattpad is part of the WEBTOON Entertainment family of brands, home to some of the world's largest storytelling platforms. With approximately 155 million monthly active users, WEBTOON Entertainment's IP & Creator Ecosystem of aligned brands and platforms include WEBTOON, Wattpad—the world's leading webnovel platform—WEBTOON Productions, Studio N, Studio LICO, WEBTOON Unscrolled, LINE MANGA, and eBookJapan, among others.

We are looking for a Director of Design to lead, grow, and elevate our design organization. This role is responsible for setting a clear design vision and strategy across our products while coaching and developing our team of designers and researchers. You will shape how design influences product direction by blending strategic direction with hands-on involvement in our most critical design initiatives to deliver intuitive and emotionally resonant experiences for readers, writers, and advertisers.

Why this role matters

Design plays a critical role in how users experience our platform and how quickly they reach enjoyment and stay in flow. This role will shape not only what we build, but how we think about building it. You will help ensure that design is a driving force behind clarity, cohesion, and joy in our products.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the design organization
  • Lead, coach, and mentor a team of product designers and user researchers and provide active coaching, feedback, and skill development
  • Foster a culture of strong design thinking, craft excellence, and accountability to outcomes
  • Establish clear expectations for quality, clarity, and impact, while giving teams autonomy in how they get there
• Set the design vision and strategy
  • Define and evolve a clear design vision aligned to product strategy and user needs
  • Shape cohesive, intuitive experiences across the reader, writer, and ads ecosystems
  • Translate ambiguous problem spaces into clear experience direction teams can confidently execute against
  • Ensure design decisions ladder to user value, platform goals, and long-term strategy
• Be hands-on where it matters most
  • Actively contribute to high-impact initiatives and critical product moments
  • Partner closely with product and engineering leaders during discovery, definition, and delivery
  • Provide strong critique and feedback that raises the bar without prescribing solutions
  • Govern and evolve the design system to ensure consistency, scalability, and accessibility
  • Balance speed and craft by enabling teams to move fast without compromising quality
  • Balance speed and craft, knowing when to push for exploration and when to drive toward execution
  • Set clear standards for usability, accessibility, and visual cohesion across surfaces
• Champion user-centred practices
  • Champion the user perspective by ensuring user goals are never abstract or assumed
  • Partner with product and research to ensure insights meaningfully shape product direction
  • Manage and support the user research team, ensuring research is actionable and strategic
  • Use evidence, data, and research to influence decisions and challenge assumptions
• Collaborate and influence across the organization
  • Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Content, Trust and Safety, and Ads to align on experience outcomes and tradeoffs
  • Influence product direction through clear design narratives, not just artifacts
  • Facilitate design critiques, workshops, and working sessions that move teams toward clarity and alignment
  • Drive alignment on priorities, tradeoffs, and outcomes through strong design storytelling
  • Advocate for the role of design as a strategic partner, not a downstream function
  • Help the organization understand how great design drives engagement, trust, and growth

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and scaling design teams in a product driven organization
• Strong design point of view with the ability to set direction and make hard tradeoffs
• Deep experience shaping end-to-end product experiences across multiple surfaces
• Ability to move fluidly between strategy and hands on execution
• Track record of influencing product direction through design narrative and user insight
• Strong cross functional collaborator who can partner effectively with senior leaders
• Passion for designing for real human needs, delight, and emotional resonance

$170,000 - $210,000 a year. This range is listed in CAD. This position qualifies for the full suite of benefits.

What we offer (For Full-Time Only)

• Career development; we believe in mentorship and investing in your learning, supporting you to achieve your goals
• Top industry health benefits, including vision and dental
• Your own health/wellness account to spend each year
• RRSP Contributions (Canada), 401K Contributions (USA)
• Generous vacation and Maternity/Parental leave top-up program
• Corporate discount for gym memberships for you and your family
• Work from almost anywhere in the world for part of the year
• Winter break shutdown and a whole lot more

Wattpad is conducting all interviews in a distributed manner using applicable third party software where needed and using visual interface tools such as Google Meet and Zoom.

About Wattpad

Who are we? Entrepreneurs and Do-ers. Our vision is to entertain and connect the world through stories, and our mission is to use the power of community and technology to unleash the full potential of stories to the world. We are visionaries, community builders, passionate problem solvers, storytellers, coffee snobs (tea drinkers, too!), curious by nature, and culturally diverse. We are obsessed with our users, solving problems, maximizing flow, and building the next great storytelling product.

Wattpad is a remote friendly company and encourages remote candidates to apply as long as they are located and authorized to work in either the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) as a precondition of employment. We are not able to sponsor applicants for work permits.

Culture and Diversity

Wattpad is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate. We welcome and encourage applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process. We are committed to fostering a global team that reflects the diversity of the Wattpad community. We consider employment applicants without regard to age, race, colour, national origin, citizenship, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, marital status, disability status or any other protected status. If you have any special needs or accessibility requirements, please let us know. We will do our utmost to accommodate, in accordance with applicable local legislation.

Don’t meet all the requirements? We encourage you to apply anyway to contribute to a more diverse workplace.

#Wattpad

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Location: Toronto, Ontario