Digital Design Leader [Permanent - CDI] (f/m/d)

Decathlon Digital; Lille; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-friendly hybrid model

Gear and equipment provided (Mac/PC)

Global career opportunities

Training and certifications from year

Profit sharing and bonuses

Job summary

Decathlon Digital in Lille/Paris seeks a Digital Design Senior Manager to lead Design System and Design & Research Ops. You will guide a diverse, international design community and collaborate with Product and Engineering to elevate design excellence, accessibility, and sustainability.

You will shape a forward-looking design strategy that leverages AI while coaching teams across omni-channel and core platforms, ensuring a scalable, human-centered craft.

Qualifications

• 8-10 years of experience in digital design within complex, international product environments.
• Proven track record in direct management, ideally leading hybrid profiles (designers, engineers).
• Strong cross-functional leadership with ability to influence senior stakeholders (Directors, product, tech).
• Deep understanding of AI and eco-design in design practice.

Responsibilities

• Manage and develop your direct teams (Design System and Design & Research Ops).
• Lead the Design System to stay relevant across B2C, E2E, and B2B products and measure adoption.
• Drive Design & Research Ops to meet team needs and improve decision quality.
• Coach and structure onboarding, upskill teams, and foster cross-domain collaboration.
• Champion future design practices, actively monitor industry trends, and experiment with AI-enabled methods.
• Create conditions for community contribution to tools, standards, and practices.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to advocate design excellence, accessibility, eco-design, and business impact.

Skills

Design leadership

People management

Cross-functional leadership

AI in design

French-English bilingual

Job description

Context & project

Decathlon’s mission is to bring people together through sport to make wellbeing accessible for all. Fulfilling this mission requires design excellence at both ends of our digital experience: for the millions of sports lovers using our customer apps and websites, and for the thousands of teammates who rely on our tools in stores, warehouses, and offices to do their jobs every day.

Context & project

Decathlon’s mission is to bring people together through sport to make wellbeing accessible for all. Fulfilling this mission requires design excellence at both ends of our digital experience: for the millions of sports lovers using our customer apps and websites, and for the thousands of teammates who rely on our tools in stores, warehouses, and offices to do their jobs every day.

Digital design plays a pivotal role in supporting Decathlon’s growth and human connection. How? By ensuring our digital tools are simple, reliable, and enjoyable, and by giving our design community the shared foundations, systems, and practices they need to deliver the best possible experiences.

Your mission

In this context, we’re looking for a Digital Design Senior Manager within the Product Center of Excellence (CoE) to lead our core design capabilities, provide thought leadership on the future of our craft, and support our design community across Decathlon Digital.

As a Design Leader, you will have a dual mission: you will directly manage the Design System team and the Design & Research Ops team, while functionally leading and inspiring the community of digital product designers embedded across our different business domains (eCommerce, Store apps, Supply Chain, and internal platforms) and countries. You will also steer how design evolves at Decathlon in the era of AI.

Role & Responsibilities

• Manage and develop your direct teams (Design System and Design & Research Ops): set their priorities, support their professional growth, and ensure their work delivers tangible value to Decathlon teams.
• Lead our Design System: ensure its relevance across all digital touchpoints by catering to the specific needs of B2C, E2E, and B2B products, as well as sports experiences. Measure its adoption and its contribution to team efficiency and experience quality.
• Drive Design & Research Ops: ensure that tools, methods, and operational frameworks meet real team needs, are effectively adopted, and tangibly contribute to operational efficiency and the quality of product decisions.
• Support and coach our design teammates functionally: clarify career paths, structure onboarding programs, drive upskilling, and foster synergies and best-practice sharing across domains.
• Champion a forward-looking vision for design and its practices, especially in the era of AI, through active industry monitoring and experimentation with emerging practices.
• Create the conditions for active community contribution to the evolution of our tools, standards, and practices.
• Build strong partnerships with Product and Engineering leaders to advocate for design excellence, digital accessibility (RGAA / WCAG), eco-design, and business impact.

Hard Skills

• Around 8-10 years of experience in digital design, gained within complex, international product environments.
• Proven track record in direct management, ideally leading hybrid profiles (designers, engineers).
• Strong cross-functional leadership, with a demonstrated ability to influence, advise, and align senior stakeholders (Directors, business teams, tech, and product).
• Deep understanding and strong awareness of current digital design challenges, particularly regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and eco-design.
• Fluency in both written and spoken French and English is required to thrive in an international environment.

Behaviors / Soft Skills

• Influence without authority — Build trust, inspire teams with a forward-looking vision, and rally decentralized designers, product managers, and engineering leaders around shared standards
• Cross-functional collaboration — Work closely with diverse domains (Omni, Supply Chain, Sports, Core Platforms), listening to their specific operational realities
• Design collaboration — Foster an open, generous craft culture where teams share work early, learn from failures, and help each other grow
• Growth mindset — Stay curious and grounded, proactively developing yourself and others while turning challenges into positive learning moments

The CoE might be a perfect match for you if…

• You love enabling other designers and seeing teams succeed thanks to your support
• You enjoy both direct team management and leading a wider community
• You are excited about the future of design and passionate about demystifying AI into practical, human-centered practices
• You like bringing clarity to complex environments and building simple, scalable solutions
• You want to play a key role in elevating design excellence across Decathlon Digital!

What We Offer

• Flexible working: 2 days of remote work per week;
• Work locations: Ability to work from any Decathlon Digital office in Lille or Paris
• High-quality gear: Equipment provided in line with your mission and our social commitments (Mac, Windows, or Chromebooks);
• Global reach: A local project team within a worldwide network (offering international career opportunities);
• Skill development: Continuous growth and support (diverse projects, technical certifications from year one, internal and external training, etc.);
• Compensation package: Competitive package (employee profit-sharing, monthly/quarterly bonuses).

DECATHLON DIGITAL CONTEXT

What if technology allowed us to push the boundaries and take sports experiences to new levels? That's exactly our goal at Decathlon Digital! We are a team of 5,000+ experts in software engineering, product management, data, cloud, and cybersecurity, distributed across Paris, Lille, and Amsterdam. Together, we are creating the largest digital sports platform, leveraging tech innovation from design to value chain optimization, connected experiences and product second life.
Changing the game for good. We are in this for the love of sports. And like everything we love, we want it to last. That’s why we are embarking on a journey to create a more sustainable tech model, reducing our direct environmental impact while maintaining a safe, diverse, and inclusive space for all our people to learn and thrive together. Team up with us to design the digital future of sports.