Lead Experience Designer

Thoughtworks; Riyadh Region; In loco; SAR 350.000 - 550.000; Tempo pieno

Descrizione del lavoro

Thoughtworks in Riyadh is seeking a Lead Experience Designer to shape AI-powered products and experiences. You will drive end-to-end design from concept to shipped solutions, collaborating with Product Managers, Data/AI specialists, and engineers in small, multidisciplinary pods.

This role blends hands-on interaction design with strategy, client advisory, and capability-building to scale local design practice in the Middle East.

Competenze

• 8+ years leading product design with end-to-end ownership.
• Experience on large-scale programs and senior stakeholder alignment.
• Strong user research, journey mapping, and rapid prototyping.
• Experience in AI-native product design and conversational interfaces.

Mansioni

• Lead end-to-end design across engagements and guide prototyping and validation.
• Shape AI-native user flows, with emphasis on trust and transparency.
• Leverage AI tools to accelerate ideation without sacrificing craft.
• Lead lightweight research and champion inclusive design.
• Build and govern design systems with engineering to ensure consistency.
• Advise clients at executive levels and support pre-sales activities.
• Help grow and shape the local Experience Design capability in the region.

Conoscenze

Lead design leadership

End-to-end design ownership

User research & journey mapping

AI-aware design

Accessibility & inclusive design

Conversational interfaces design

Executive stakeholder management

Regional market experience (MENA)

Descrizione del lavoro

Join Thoughtworks at the beginning of our next chapter in the Middle East. KSA and the UAE are strategic growth markets for us, fueled by ambitious national agendas around AI, digital government, data, and economic transformation, such as Vision 2030. We are looking for an experienced Lead Experience Designer to join our fast-growing local team in Riyadh.

As a Lead Experience Designer, you will be the creative force driving the definition and delivery of AI-powered products and experiences. Operating within small, fast-paced, multidisciplinary pods - collaborating shoulder-to-shoulder with Product Managers, Data/AI Specialists, and forward deployed engineers - you will lead end-to-end design from initial concept through to shipped products.

This role combines hands-on interaction design, strategic client advisory, and foundational practice-building. You will shape how agentic AI systems behave, look, and feel while helping establish and scale local design capabilities and client relationships.

Job Responsibilities

• End-to-End Design Ownership: Lead experience design across all engagement phases. Facilitate discovery workshops, map complex user journeys, create mid-to-high fidelity concept visualisations, and build interactive prototypes. Design in parallel with engineering, testing with working prototypes rather than static handoffs.
• AI-Native & Agentic UX: Shape conversational, multi-modal, and autonomous agent flows. Apply core principles of trust, transparency, and user control - surfacing AI reasoning appropriately, managing uncertainty, and setting responsible AI guardrails.
• AI-Accelerated Practice: Leverage AI tools and platforms (such as Figma, UX Pilot, Bolt, Murai, Maze, and LLM research tools) to collapse ideation cycles and accelerate research without compromising craft or usability.
• Lean User Research & Testing: Conduct lightweight generative and evaluative research that matches rapid sprint cycles. Champion accessibility, inclusive design, and continuous validation from day one.
• Design Systems & Scalability: Build, evolve, and govern design systems and component libraries in close partnership with engineering to drive pod velocity and visual consistency.
• Consultative Leadership & Advisory: Act as a trusted advisor to client executives, partnering with them to shape user experiences for ambitious AI-native products, data platforms, and complex digital transformations. Apply a consultative approach in pre-sales, helping shape engagements, creating proposals, and establishing our trusted footprint in the region.
• Practice Building & Culture: Play a pivotal role in building our local Experience Design capability, influencing our multidisciplinary teams, establishing design culture, and shaping early client relationships in the Middle East.

Job Qualifications

Technical skills

• 8+ years of experience in product design with a portfolio demonstrating exceptional visual design quality, strong UX reasoning, fast concept-to-prototype capability, and end-to-end ownership of shipped digital products.
• Demonstrated track record of leading design on large-scale programs, 0-1 product launches and navigating senior stakeholder groups.
• Expertise in user research, journey mapping, wireframing, and rapid prototyping, utilising lean approaches to validate desirability, viability, and feasibility.
• Fluency in designing for AI and data-driven products -comfortable exploring how AI can enhance the user experience and utilising AI-enabled design tools in your daily workflow.
• Experience bringing a human-centered design and innovation mindset into organizations at scale, particularly in environments undergoing rapid economic or digital transformation.
• Strong grounding in accessibility, inclusive design, and responsive/adaptive design across devices and contexts.
• Experience or experiments in designing conversational interfaces: AI chat, task-oriented assistants, voice, or multi-modal experiences - with a clear understanding of how these differ fundamentally from traditional design.

Professional Skills

• KSA/Middle East design experience (or strong experience having developed products for Riyadh/Middle East)
• Skilled at operating and building relationships with executive stakeholders, and confident in driving