Product Design Lead

Fuel50; Auckland; Hybrid; NZD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Birthday off

ReFuel Day

Remote work

Parental leave

Health insurance

Job summary

Fuel50 is seeking a senior Product Design Lead to shape the product experience and design organisation. You will lead and grow the product design team while staying close to the work, setting direction, shaping strategy and prototyping ideas to ship high-quality experiences.

You will collaborate with Product and Engineering as a leadership trio, influencing decisions and driving simple, trusted, valuable products across platforms including Teams and Copilot.

Qualifications

• Senior product design experience in SaaS/tech (7+ years recommended).
• 2+ years leading/coaching designers, building high-performing teams.
• Strong craft across discovery, interaction, visual design, prototyping, and shipping digital products.

Responsibilities

• Lead, manage and coach product designers, supporting their growth and next level.
• Set a clear product design vision across Fuel50's offerings and tell the product story to excite stakeholders.
• Own design direction, spot opportunities, prototype ideas, and ship tangible outcomes.
• Influence senior decisions across the business with strong judgement and communication.
• Partner with Product and Engineering from discovery to delivery, balancing value, quality and pace.
• Design human-centered AI experiences with trust, explainability and clear handoffs.

Skills

Leadership

Product design

Discovery & research

Stakeholder influence

Systems thinking

Tools

HTML/CSS/JS prototyping

Design systems

Job description

Fuel50 is a workforce transformation platform helping organisations understand workforce capability, build skills and enable internal mobility in an AI-driven world. Our products combine skills intelligence, talent marketplace experiences and responsible AI to help people and organisations take their next step.

We are looking for a Product Design Lead to shape the next chapter of our product experience and design organisation.

This is a senior player-coach role. You will lead and develop our product design team while staying close to the work, setting direction, shaping product strategy, prototyping ideas and helping teams ship high-quality experiences.

You will work closely with Product and Engineering as a leadership trio, influencing decisions across the organisation and helping Fuel50 build products that are simple, trusted and valuable.

If you’re a strategic design leader who still loves getting close to the work, developing people and shipping real product, we’d love to hear from you!

What you'll do:

• Lead, manage and coach our product designers, supporting their growth and helping them reach their next level.

• Set and communicate a clear product design vision across Fuel50's skills intelligence, talent mobility and AI-powered experiences, and tell the story of where our products are going in a way that excites customers, colleagues and leadership.

• Own the design direction without waiting for it to be handed to you. Spot opportunities, form a point of view, and prototype ideas to make them tangible.

• Bring a strong point of view to senior conversations, challenge assumptions constructively and influence decisions across the business.

• Partner with Product and Engineering from discovery through to delivery, balancing customer value, design quality, technical reality and pace.

• Design human-centred AI experiences with appropriate trust, explainability, user control and clear handoffs, including agent and assistant experiences that work across multiple surfaces such as the Fuel50 platform, Microsoft Teams and Copilot.

• Grow our design engineering capability, and be comfortable building and shipping working prototypes or code yourself.

• Evolve our design system, accessibility standards (including WCAG compliance) and design-to-code practices so Fuel50 feels coherent and high quality across every product.

• Shape design team structure, capability, hiring, planning and ways of working as the organisation evolves.

What you'll bring:

• Experience in product design in a SaaS or technology environment (we suggest 7 or more years), including at least 2 years leading, managing or coaching designers, and a track record of building healthy, high-performing teams.

• Strong product design craft across discovery, interaction design, visual design, prototyping, research and shipped digital products.

• Experience designing complex, connected systems and journeys for multiple personas, ideally in an enterprise or B2B product.

• The ability to think big and set a compelling vision, while staying pragmatic about what can be learned and shipped next.

• The ability to originate ideas and direction, and to communicate them clearly through stories, prototypes and design narrative.

• Confidence working with experienced senior stakeholders and influencing through clarity, judgement and strong communication.

• Experience working closely with Product and Engineering as a genuine cross-functional trio.

• Technical fluency and a willingness to get into the code. You should be comfortable building working prototypes using HTML, CSS, JavaScript or similar tools, and have contributed code that has shipped to production, for example front-end changes or design system components submitted through pull requests.

• Hands-on experience using AI coding and design tools, such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, to prototype faster and ship real work. We want someone who uses these tools well and can show how they have changed the way their team works.

• Working knowledge of accessibility and WCAG. You have designed to WCAG standards, tested for it, and built accessibility into your team's design system and review process.

• An interest in design systems and data-informed decision-making.

You do not need to tick every box. We care about the quality of your thinking, the way you work with people and your ability to turn ambitious ideas into better product experiences.

All Fuellies are a core part of our culture and making Fuel50 an amazing place to work. Some additional benefits are:

• A day off on your birthday and your Fuel50 anniversary

• A “ReFuel Day” once a quarter to relax and refuel

• Remote work and flexible work times - we're supportive of school commitments, traveling in off-peak hours, and attending to life’s events

• A progressive parental leave policy

• Comprehensive fully subsidised health insurance with Southern Cross

What's it like to be a Fuellie?

Fuel50’s team is fully remote, with an HQ in New Zealand, and team members across five countries. We have a co-working space in the BHive in Takapuna that we use to meet occasionally for team and strategic planning and other team events. If you’re based outside of Auckland and are needed on-site for anything, we’ll pay for you to get here.

We know that having the right people with the right attitude and behaviour is a big part of what makes us successful. Living our values is an important part of being successful in this role.

• We have a culture around continuous and respectful feedback and recognition - be part of a team working towards a common goal and helping each other every step of the way.

• We have #SuperheroAwards at quarterly planning meetings and spontaneous recognition and shout-outs across the business.

• We'll have your back when you need help - your colleagues want to see you succeed and work hard to help you do so.

• We work hard and deliver amazing results to our clients - when you see our amazing feedback, you'll be proud to be a Fuellie.

This role is based in New Zealand, candidates must hold the relevant right to work in NZ i.e. Citizenship or a work visa at the time of application.