About this role
Role purpose:
Lead the enterprise Design Studio as a scalable design function, combining people leadership,
DesignOps, Figma and DLS governance, production-grade AI design, and strong executive stakeholder influence.
Key Responsibilities
-
- Team Leadership
-
Lead and develop a large multidisciplinary team across UX, UI, Product Design, Design Systems and DesignOps.
-
Assess current team skills, seniority and capacity; maintain a skills matrix and close gaps through hiring and
-
upskilling.
-
Allocate designers by project need, complexity and capacity, and build the next layer of design leadership.
-
- DesignOps & Scaled Design Process
-
Define a scalable design lifecycle from intake to UX, UI, Design QA, developer handover and release.
-
Set clear gates, Definition of Done and SLAs for projects, BAU requests, audits and change requests.
-
Manage demand, capacity and priorities, and track KPIs such as turnaround, rework, DLS adoption and stakeholder
-
satisfaction.
-
- Figma Enterprise & DLS Governance
-
Own the structure and governance of a complex Figma Enterprise environment: teams, projects, libraries, access
-
and file lifecycle.
-
Ensure approved designs are clearly separated from working, experimental and archived files.
-
Own the Design Language System as a product: contribution, versioning, release and alignment with coded
-
components.
-
- AI-Enabled Design
-
Move AI beyond POCs into governed, repeatable production workflows across research, UX, UI, DLS documentation,
-
Design QA and design-to-code.
-
Define approved tools, reusable workflows and human review points, compliant with enterprise security and the
-
DLS.
-
Measure AI impact on productivity, cycle time, quality and consistency.
-
- Presentation, Storytelling & Stakeholder Management
-
Act as the voice of the Design Studio with senior leadership, business, technology teams and vendors.
-
Turn complex design and AI topics into clear business stories: problem, user need, rationale, impact and
-
recommendation.
-
Influence decisions, align competing priorities and challenge requirements constructively.
-
- Cross-Team & External Design Governance
-
Establish a federated model so internal, project and vendor design teams follow common standards.
-
Run onboarding, design reviews and audits for work produced outside the Studio, and prevent parallel design
-
systems.
Requirements
-
MUST: Proven corporate / large-enterprise experience, working within complex organizational structures,
-
governance processes and senior stakeholder environments.
-
12+ years in UX/UI, Product or Experience Design, including 5+ years leading multidisciplinary design teams.
-
Experience leading a large or distributed design organization and establishing a DesignOps operating model.
-
Strong hands-on Figma Enterprise expertise (libraries, variables, permissions, Dev Mode, governance).
-
Proven experience building or governing an enterprise-scale design system / DLS.
-
Practical experience running AI-assisted design workflows in production, not only POCs.
-
Strong design-to-development collaboration with engineering teams.
-
Exceptional executive presentation, storytelling and stakeholder-management skills.
-
Leadership Profile
-
Design Leader: credible direction across UX, UI and product design.
-
People Leader: builds and grows a large multidisciplinary team.
-
DesignOps Leader: turns people, process, Figma and DLS into one operating model.
-
AI Design Leader: makes AI part of daily delivery, with measurable value.
-
Storyteller & Influencer: simplifies complex problems and wins senior alignment.
-
What Success Looks Like
-
Clear roles, processes and standards, with work allocated by capability and capacity.
-
A structured, governed and scalable Figma environment and a widely adopted DLS.
-
Internal and external design teams working to common standards.
-
AI embedded in day-to-day design delivery with measurable results.
-
The Design Studio recognized by senior stakeholders as a strategic capability.