[Hiring] Product Design Lead @Fuel50

Role Description

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.
• Own the design direction without waiting for it to be handed to you.
• 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.
• Design human-centred AI experiences with appropriate trust, explainability, user control and clear handoffs.
• 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.
• Shape design team structure, capability, hiring, planning and ways of working as the organisation evolves.

Qualifications

• Experience in product design in a SaaS or technology environment (7 or more years), including at least 2 years leading, managing or coaching designers.
• 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.
• Hands-on experience using AI coding and design tools, such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor.
• Working knowledge of accessibility and WCAG.
• An interest in design systems and data-informed decision-making.

Benefits

• 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.
• A progressive parental leave policy.
• Comprehensive fully subsidised health insurance with Southern Cross.

Company 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.

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.

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.

We work hard and deliver amazing results to our clients.

Application Process

If this sounds like you, then please apply. If you’re not sure you're ready or perhaps you don't meet all requirements yet, please apply anyway. We'll review every application that we get.

Please include a link to your portfolio or attach it as part of your application.

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.