VP of Product Design

Pencil

. Bring product design and UX into a single team with one quality bar .

Posted 11/6/2026full-timeRemoteLeadWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates extensive experience in product design and team leadership, with a strong focus on building design culture and implementing design systems in complex enterprise software. Proficient in utilizing AI tools to enhance design workflows and improve collaboration across teams.

Highest-signal resume keywords

10+ Years In Product Design5+ Years Leading Design TeamsExperience With Design SystemsKnowledge Of Design-System TokensStrong Hands-On Product Design Craft

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Product DesignDesign System ImplementationAI Tools UtilizationDesign CraftsmanshipInteraction Model DefinitionAccessibility DesignComponent Library DevelopmentEnterprise Software DesignWorkflow DesignOrganizational Change Leadership

Soft Skills

Creative AmbitionCollaborationLeadershipTeam BuildingCommunication

Tools & Technologies

AI ToolsDesign System TokensComponent APIsFront-End Constraints

Industry Keywords

B2B ProductEnterprise GovernanceDesign CultureUser FlowsDesign Review Processes

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Bring product design and UX into a single team with one quality bar
Establish design culture, critique, rituals, and shared ambition
Partner with product and engineering to ship features on time and on-system
Improve design speed, turnaround times, and planning through AI tools and the design system
Review, improve, and implement Pencil’s design system across the product
Establish design-system tokens in code and a component library for engineering
Define guidelines for AI-generated UI to remain on-system
Define interaction models for briefing, running, supervising, reviewing, and approving agent work
Design for enterprise governance, control, trust, practitioner speed, and creative range
Establish design-review processes and collaboration rituals across design, product, and engineering
Define team structure, levels, career paths, and hiring
Collaborate with Marketing Design to align product and brand
Bring design into discovery and research and conduct post-launch reviews
Hire and lead design engineers
Build accessibility into the design system
In the first 90 days, meet designers, learn the product and customers, review the system, ship a shared pattern, and agree review and contribution models
By month 6, standardize key user flows and establish team structure, levels, and rituals
By month 12, make on-system shipping the default and reduce duplicated components

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years in product design, with 5+ years leading teams of designers, including other leads
Experience building a design culture
Creative ambition beyond the functional brief
Experience taking an existing design system and achieving adoption in a fast-moving B2B product
Experience with complex enterprise software, including workflows, permissions, review and approval, and dense data
Daily use of AI tools and understanding of coding agents in design workflows
Knowledge of design-system tokens, component APIs, and front-end constraints
Strong hands-on product design craft
Experience leading organizational change
Experience designing AI or agent products, creative or marketing tools, or leading teams across time zones is helpful

Benefits

Comp & perks

25 days PTO plus public holidays, although we operate a Flexible Time Off scheme
Health insurance / private medical cover
Monthly stipend towards wellness, fitness, and learning and development
Remote: work from anywhere in your home country
Enhanced parental leave policies, whether you become a parent through birth, adoption or surrogacy
Access to our Pencil office in The Shard, London for UK employees
Flexible working hours