Senior Product Designer

Hard Problems; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 700,000 - 900,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

STI Bonus

Equity exposure via staff share scheme

Onboarding offsite (Powerkit)

Wellness initiatives

Job summary

NOA (Net Zero Africa) in Cape Town is hiring its first dedicated product designer to own end‑to‑end design across internal tools, customer platforms and a shared design system. The role focuses on data‑dense interfaces, reports and dashboards, with close collaboration to product managers and engineers.

This hands‑on position requires autonomy, strong product thinking, and proficiency with Claude or similar AI tools.

Qualifications

• Portfolio showing UX flows for complex data‑dense software.
• Experience as sole designer or ability to lead independently.
• Strong product thinking beyond visuals and business context.
• Ability to explain design process clearly during interview.
• Proficiency with Claude or similar AI tools in daily design work.

Responsibilities

• Own end‑to‑end design on workstreams from discovery to handoff.
• Design internal tools, processes and customer platforms.
• Contribute to and evolve the design system and tokens.
• Work with engineering to ensure ships match design intent.
• Collaborate with product on discovery using real user stories.
• Iterate in short cycles, shipping MVPs and learning fast.

Skills

Autonomous designer

UX portfolio

Sole designer

Product thinking

Design process

Claude AI

Design systems

Prototyping

Fintech exposure

Figma

Tools

Figma

Job description

NOA (Net Zero Africa) is a fully integrated energy company established in 2022 that generates, procures, aggregates and delivers clean, competitively priced electricity to commercial and industrial businesses across South Africa. Backed by $245 million in equity capital from Old Mutual's African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), NOA holds a trading licence from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa and currently has 1.5 GW of generation capacity under construction, sourced from wind, solar PV and battery storage sites alongside independent power producers.

The role

NOA is building the software that runs its commercial and industrial energy business and is hiring its first dedicated product designer. You would work across internal tools, customer‑facing platforms and a shared design system. The work is data‑dense and complex: customers use interfaces, reports and dashboards, while internal teams rely on tools to run the business. You would sit within a cross‑functional, empowered product team alongside product managers (who have deep design backgrounds) and engineers. Initially you would cover design across several product teams; as the organisation grows, the role will narrow to fewer domains. This is a hands‑on craft role, not a route into design management.

What you would do

• Own design end to end on your workstreams, from discovery and flows through to prototypes, UI and handoff.
• Design complex internal tools, internal processes and customer‑facing platforms.
• Build on the existing design system and have a significant say in its direction, including token structures and component libraries.
• Work directly with engineering to ensure what ships matches the design intent.
• Collaborate closely with product on discovery, working from well‑defined problems and real user stories to decide how to solve them.
• Work in short cycles: ship the smallest useful version, learn from it and iterate rather than designing in isolation for weeks.
• Use Claude and other AI tools throughout your work for research synthesis, documentation, exploring options and building working prototypes when code is faster than Figma (final UI still lives in Figma).

What they are looking for

• At least 5 years of experience as an autonomous designer, ideally closer to 8; there is no upper limit and the level hired at will depend on the person.
• A portfolio demonstrating UX flows and patterns for complex, data‑dense, workflow‑heavy software (fintech, enterprise tools or internal platforms); consumer web or app work alone is not sufficient.
• Experience working as the sole designer, or the confidence to take on that position from the start.
• Strong product thinking that goes beyond visual polish, including an understanding of audience, use case and business context.
• A design process you can explain clearly; the interview will include walking through how you approached a real problem.
• Comfort working with qualitative signals in the absence of A/B tests or behavioural analytics.
• A preference for MVP thinking over big‑batch design.
• Strong, hands‑on proficiency with Claude or other AI platforms used daily in design work, with specific examples of how it changed what you produced (this is a hard requirement).
• Fluency with design systems, including token structures and component libraries, and knowing when to extend or break from a component.
• Fast prototyping skills.
• Nice to have: experience in fintech or another data‑heavy, regulated or workflow‑heavy industry; experience designing reporting or dashboard‑heavy products.

Working arrangements

The role is based in Cape Town and operates on a hybrid basis, with flexible hours and work‑from‑home options.

Pay and benefits

NOA offers a competitive salary tailored to experience level, a performance‑related short‑term incentive (STI) bonus, and equity exposure through a staff share scheme. Benefits also include a day‑long onboarding offsite (the Powerkit), a continuous feedback and coaching cadence, and wellness initiatives.