Design Lead

Malaa | ملاءة; Riyadh; On-site; SAR 250,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

Malaa seeks a Design Lead to own product design end-to-end for a regulated financial app. You will shape the standard, system, process and people, starting with the designer, and you will design with engineers to ship working prototypes quickly using AI tools alongside Figma.

You will lead the quality bar for customer screens, unify the design system across mobile, web and internal tools, and mentor a growing design team with a hands-on, collaborative approach to delivery.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in product design with at least 2 years as the most senior designer on a live consumer product, ideally in regulated domains such as financial services.
• Evidence of shipped product/flow, a design system built or substantially improved, and a track record of simplifying or removing complexity.
• Experience mentoring at least one designer; strong command of Figma and current AI design/prototyping tools.

Responsibilities

• Own the quality bar for every customer-facing screen in a regulated financial product: clarity, calm, trust and simplicity.
• Own and unify the design system across mobile, web and internal tools; reduce fragmentation across squads.
• Lead people with goals, feedback, growth and regular one-to-ones; participate in hiring as the team grows.
• Define design requests, prioritisation and delivery so product managers get what they need without bottlenecks.
• Disrupt old patterns with rapid prototyping and evidence-driven design decisions.

Skills

Product design

Mentoring

Figma

AI design tools

RTL design

Arabic/English bilingual

Tools

Figma

AI prototyping tools

Job description

The role

This role takes ownership of product design as a function: the standard, the system, the process and the people, starting with that designer.

This is a hands on role. In a team of two, the lead designs as much as they direct. You will set the bar by doing the work, review everything that ships, and build the design system and practices that let the product move faster without losing coherence.

The role is built for the way product work is changing. We are looking for a designer who can go from a problem to a working, clickable version in days, using AI design and prototyping tools alongside Figma, and who is comfortable working directly with engineers on what actually gets built rather than handing over static screens.

What you will own

• The quality bar. Every customer facing screen goes through you. You define what good looks like for a regulated financial product used by people who are often investing for the first time: clear, calm, trustworthy, and simple where the underlying rules are not.
• The design system. One system across the mobile app, the web and internal tools, built and maintained in Figma and matched to what engineers implement. You reduce the number of ways we do the same thing.
• The people. Goals, feedback, growth and regular one to ones. As the team grows, you hire and shape it.
• The process. Design is shared across the product function. You decide how design work is requested, prioritised and delivered so that product managers get what they need without design becoming the bottleneck.
• Discovery and prototyping. Before a specification, a prototype. You build clickable versions quickly, test them with customers and with the team, and let evidence, not opinion, settle design debates.
• Simplifying. Each quarter you remove something: a redundant flow, an inconsistent component, a screen that exists for historical reasons. Shipping less that works well is part of the role.
• Regulated flows. Onboarding, KYC, disclosures, risk warnings and consent are designed as product. You work with compliance early and make the required feel effortless.

How product, design and engineering work together?

Product and engineering at Malaa operate as one team under a single planning model. Product managers are paired with small squads of engineers, and design is a shared resource across squads. Priorities and capacity are settled weekly across squads, and every initiative is documented and designed before it is built. The Design Lead sits in that weekly forum, owns the design capacity across squads, and is accountable for design being ready when engineering needs it.

How we expect you to work?

• Show, do not describe. A prototype or a marked up screen beats a presentation about design principles.
• Close to the build. You review what engineers implement against what was designed, and you resolve the gap in the room rather than in a ticket.
• Written and visible. Design decisions and the reasoning behind them are recorded so that the next person does not reopen them.
• You hold the bar with product managers and engineers as well as with designers.
• Close to the customer. You talk to users regularly and you read the product data. Mixpanel and session recordings are tools you use yourself.

Qualifications:

Required:

• Three or more years in product design, with at least two years as the most senior designer on a live consumer product, ideally in financial services or another regulated domain.
• Evidence of all three: a product or flow you designed that shipped and moved a number, a design system you built or materially improved, and something you simplified or removed.
• Experience managing or formally mentoring at least one designer.
• Strong command of Figma and of current AI design and prototyping tools, with working prototypes you can show.
• Fluency in Arabic and English, and a strong sense of bilingual and right to left interface design.

Preferred:

• Experience in fintech, banking or investment products in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf.
• Enough front end understanding to read component code and discuss implementation trade offs with engineers.
• Experience running customer research and usability testing without a dedicated research team.

Why join

• You will define how a product that manages real money for a large customer base looks, feels and behaves, and you will build the design function from its first hire. The team is small, the standard is high and the impact of your decisions is visible to every customer who opens the app. If you want to set the bar rather than inherit one, this is that seat.