Head of Product Design

At a Glance

Us: Fast-growing startup of 100+ people. We are a remote-first team, mainly based in the UK. YC alumni (summer 2019) and Series A funding of 32$m in 2023. Our mission is to revolutionise how the world learns about people, so people can revolutionise the world.🚀

You: An Inspirational, Action-Driven Product Design Leader

At Prolific, we make it possible for people across industries to do world-changing research by collecting insights from participants who are treated fairly and ethically. Whether in behavioural research, or in training AI systems to serve all the richness and diversity of the world, Prolific has an exciting role to play in shaping the future of knowledge.

The Role

As our first Head of Product Design at Prolific, you will take your place as one of the leaders of Prolific’s Product, Research, and Design Group. You’ll be managing a small, dynamic team of Product Designers ranging from associate to senior levels. You will report into our VP Product and operate as part of the Senior Leadership Team at Prolific.

Day to day, you’ll work across the needs of our stream-aligned product teams and beyond, connecting the dots strategically. As well as managing the outcomes and outputs of your Design Team’s work, you must be unafraid to get hands-on with doing Design work any time it’s needed, as servant-leadership is key to our ethos. Your time will be a mix of coaching, modelling Design Thinking and principles, and advocating to peers, leaders, and direct reports for functional, delightful customer journeys that pack a lot of value.

We believe accountability and autonomy are two sides of the same coin. We expect our colleagues in the PRD Group at Prolific to demonstrate reliability, grit, diplomacy, care, bias for action, and focus on value – you’ll be a champion of these behaviours yourself, and in the culture of your team. 

What you'll be doing

• You’ll bring your varied Design career experience to bear to solve customer problems and create new opportunities for customers to fall in love with Prolific.
• You’ll build on our great roots to transform Prolific’s Product Design team into a world-leading one, known for their beautiful and functional customer experiences across the industry in the UK and beyond.
• You’ll spend a lot of your time coaching behaviours and skills, and modelling by doing. 
• You’ll partner productively with Product Management, User Research, Analytics, and Engineering to find ways to deliver products in a test-learn-iterate fashion. 
• As the most senior Design Thinking voice at Prolific, one of your jobs will be to win hearts and minds across levels of the business to affect a sea-change in how we view our products.

What you’ll bring

• An extensive and varied track record, and ability to teach others. Leadership-level knowledge of:
  • Various Design tools, models, and methodologies, hands-on UI/UX/IxD experience, intimate knowledge of Figma, advocacy of rapid prototyping and test-learn-iterate, service design thinking, mastery of information architecture, accessibility-first thinking, Design Systems management.
• An understanding, ideally via demonstrable experience, of the different needs businesses and enterprises have when it comes to software products vs what individual consumers expect.
• People management experience, with a track record of success in developing world-class technologists.
• A storyteller’s flair, a servant-leadership ethos, belief in ‘strong opinions weakly held’, personal accountability, and a relentless can-do attitude.

Even better if you have

• Experience teaching others at scale.
• Scale-up or startup experience. 
• Marketplace experience.
• A track record of giving back to your Product/Design community.

What you’ll get

⚖️  Work-Life Balance: We’re all looking to strike the right work-life balance, and as a remote-first company you’re able to work flexibly from your home in the UK or our dog-friendly co-working space in Shoreditch. We offer 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays of course, which you can switch with any day of your choosing. We also have adjusted hours where the whole company finishes 2 hours earlier on Fridays.

🏡 Family Life: We offer generous maternity, paternity and shared parental leave. Need to pick your child up from school? No Problem. Our flexible working gives you the childcare flexibility you need. 

💰 Pension: We offer a salary sacrifice pension with a 3% starting employer contribution.

📈 Share Options: An exciting option to buy shares of Prolific in the future.

🧘 Wellbeing: We care deeply about our employees well-being, that’s why we offer comprehensive Bupa & Medicash private health insurance, that disregards medical history. Taxable monthly stipend of £150 in order for you to improve your wellness and remote experience. We want you to have a happy and healthy environment so we offer a £1000 home office budget, along with a Apple MacBook when you start, plus a £200 yearly top-up.

⚰️ Death-in-service: We offer a death-in-service benefit that would pay out 4x of your annual salary.

📚 Learn & Grow: Development is important to us, and we want to give all our employees the opportunity to learn.  There are many personal growth and career progression opportunities available, as well as mentoring. We also offer a £1000 yearly budget for education, growth and training for you to use at your discretion.

💙 Culture: We’re a friendly bunch here at Prolific; open, transparent and inclusive.  Although we’re a remote first company we still love to hang out with each other! We run collaborative quarterly company-wide meets up and team socials (both virtually and in-person), all paid for.  Alongside this we offer a £1000 yearly budget for discretionary meet-ups so you can cover travel, food and accommodation. As a business we’re also committed to carbon offsetting; each month we donate money in your name to plant trees 🌳 and being remote we’re doing our bit to offset travel too 

Our Interview Process

Talent Call: You'll meet with one of our Talent team and have an exploratory call about the role requirements, life at Prolific, as well as your background and aspirations.