Head of Product Design

PolyAI automates customer service through lifelike voice assistants that let customers lead a conversation. Our voice assistants make it possible for businesses to deliver outstanding customer service that rivals their human agents. Our customers, which include the world’s leading logos, are expanding how they use our platform, driving automation of critical customer service operations and integrating PolyAI into their daily customer service workflows.  This is a critical leadership role responsible for defining and scaling PolyAI's design vision across our entire product ecosystem. As Head of Product Design, you will lead the Product Design function, shaping how millions of users interact with PolyAI across Voice, Webchat, WhatsApp, Email, SMS, and future AI-native experiences. You'll be responsible for building a world-class design organisation, establishing a clear design strategy, raising the quality bar across every customer touchpoint, and ensuring design is a strategic partner to Product, Engineering and the wider business. You'll balance hands-on leadership with developing people, evolving design practices, and creating an environment where exceptional design can thrive. Key Responsibilities Lead, coach and grow a high-performing Product Design team, developing designers at all levels. Build an inclusive, high-performance design culture focused on craft, impact and continuous improvement. Own hiring, organisational design, performance management and succession planning for the Product Design function. Set the long-term vision for Product Design and ensure it aligns with company strategy. Partner closely with Product, Engineering and Executive Leadership to influence company priorities and product direction. Ensure design is represented early in strategic decision making and product planning. Drive exceptional design quality across every customer experience. Establish clear standards for UX, interaction design, visual design, content and accessibility. Champion a cohesive design language and evolve the company-wide design system. Shape the future of conversational and AI-first product experiences. Champion AI-native design workflows and introduce tooling that increases team effectiveness. Help define emerging interaction patterns for agentic AI products. Build a strong user-centred culture across the organisation. Ensure product decisions are informed by customer research, experimentation and data. Balance user needs with commercial objectives and technical constraints. Establish scalable design processes that enable teams to move quickly without compromising quality. Strengthen collaboration between Design, Product and Engineering. Define how design contributes to planning, prioritisation and product delivery across the company. What We're Looking For: Minimum of 8+ years of Product Design experience with several years leading high-performing design teams in fast-moving technology companies. Experience building and scaling design organisations through periods of rapid growth. Strategic Thinker Comfortable operating at both company strategy and execution levels. Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and shape product direction. Exceptional Product Sense Deep expertise across UX, UI, interaction and systems thinking. Strong judgement for creating intuitive, elegant experiences for complex products. People Leader :Passionate about coaching, mentoring and developing designers. Experience creating high-performing teams with clear career frameworks and strong design culture. AI & Innovation and excited by AI and emerging interaction paradigms. Proven experience leveraging AI throughout the design process and introducing AI-native workflows.  Uses research, experimentation and product metrics to guide decisions and measure success. Comfortable creating clarity in fast-changing environments. Able to balance long-term vision with pragmatic execution. Outstanding communicator who builds trust across Engineering, Product and Executive Leadership. Excellent facilitator who brings diverse perspectives together to make better decisions. Experience designing complex SaaS, enterprise platforms or AI products. Familiarity with conversational AI is a strong advantage. Embedded Team Experience: Experienced in being deeply embedded within a development team, working with a light touch from the Product Manager to deliver high-quality outcomes. Benefits 💰 Participation in the company’s employee share options plan 🏝 Tenure-Based PTO: You will receive 25 holidays when you join and will gain an additional 1 day after 2 years of service, then 1 day each year until capped at 32 holidays 🏡 Flexible working from home policy 🌎 Work from outside of the UK for up to 6 months each year 🫂 TELUS Health EAP 24/7 - offers you and your chosen family confi