Product Design Lead

Lyst is a global fashion shopping platform founded in London in 2010 and catering to over 160M shoppers per year. We offer our customers the largest assortment of premium & luxury fashion products in one place, curating pieces from 27,000 of the world's leading brands and stores. In 2025, Lyst joined Zozo, operators of Zozotown, the leading fashion e-commerce platform in Japan. This partnership marks a bold new era for Lyst, as we accelerate our vision and work together to transform the future of fashion shopping through AI and technology. 

At Lyst, we obsess over the customer, providing a search & discovery experience which offers inspiration, fulfilment, and personalisation. We believe that fashion is amazing but shopping for fashion often isn't, and use our technology, data and creativity to bring more joy, greater choice and fewer fails. Our mission is to help fashion shoppers make better choices and help fashion partners find better audiences as the category-leading destination for every fashion shopper.

Product Design Lead

We’re hiring a Product Design Lead to raise the quality, coherence and distinctiveness of our product experience. This person will materially improve how quickly strong ideas become shipped outcomes.

This is a functional leadership role, not a squad-level IC position. You will lead a small team of Product Designers and a Senior UX Researcher, and partner closely with Product and Engineering leadership. Product will anchor commercial intent. Engineering will anchor feasibility and execution. You are accountable for the integrity, clarity and effectiveness of the user experience across squads.

What You’ll Own

1. Experience Direction, Quality, and Impact

You are accountable for the standard of user experience across the product.

You will:

• Shape high-impact initiatives early, before direction is set.
• Ensure key journeys — particularly discovery and conversion — feel intentional, differentiated and commercially grounded.
• Set clear experience principles and quality thresholds.
• Prevent incremental drift that erodes coherence over time.
• Embed research meaningfully into product decisions.
  
  

If the experience becomes fragmented, generic or reactive, you are expected to reset direction.

2. Velocity Through Better Decisions

You are responsible for removing ambiguity that slows teams down.

You will:

• Strengthen problem framing so teams build the right thing.
• Tighten discovery and prototyping practices to enable earlier decisions.
• Improve clarity in cross-functional trade-offs between ambition, feasibility and commercial priorities.
• Reduce late-stage design churn through stronger upfront alignment.
  
  

“Faster” should mean:

• Shorter cycle time from concept to launch.
• Fewer reversals caused by unclear direction.
  Higher experiment throughput in critical journeys.
  
  

Speed should improve because experience thinking is sharper, not at the expense of standards.

3. Design Capability & Systems

Your primary leverage is through the team and the systems that support them.

You will:

• Coach designers to raise their craft, strategic thinking and commercial awareness.
• Establish stronger critique culture and clearer expectations of what good looks like.
• Evolve the design system to support both efficiency and creative expression.
• Strengthen collaboration patterns between Design, Product and Engineering leadership.
  

Within 12 months, the function should be more decisive, more rigorous and more confident in cross-functional debate.

Requirements

We’re Looking For:

• Significant experience leading design in complex, product-led environments.
• A track record of improving both experience quality and delivery effectiveness.
• Strong cross-functional partnership with Product and Engineering leaders.
• Evidence of reducing friction through clearer direction and systems thinking.
• The confidence to challenge constructively, and the pragmatism to ship.

Benefits

• Our Ways of Working: We all come into the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the option to work remotely or come into the office on the other days. We believe that in person collaboration and community spirit is super important, which is why we spend some of our time in the office and some of our time at home.
• Time Off: In addition to the 8 statutory bank holidays, you will receive 29 holidays per year. Lyst’s holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March.
• Remote Working: Work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year
• Competitive Family Leave Package: This includes Enhanced Family Leave for those eligible, paid Time off for Dependents and Support for Fertility Treatment & Loss.
• Clothing Benefit: We want you to enjoy using the Lyst app and site as much as our customers, so we provide you with a clothing allowance to use on Lyst every year. This starts at £250 when you join and increases up to £1,000 with your length of service.
• Private Healthcare: Our healthcare provider is Vitality. Your health is important to us which is why we offer all employees a comprehensive healthcare scheme from the day you start.
• Training Allowance: We’re big on continuous learning and growth, so all employees are currently entitled to an annual training allowance of £1,000. This can be used to attend conferences, industry events, training courses and to purchase resources.
• Pension Scheme: Our pension provider is The People’s Pension. We offer a minimum employee contribution of 5% and 3% employer contribution.
• Eye Tests and Vouchers: Employees can make a saving on their eye test and glasses through our chosen provider. You’ll receive a free eye test every year and a discount towards glasses.
• Cycle-to-Work Scheme: Lyst will purchase a bicycle from your chosen retailer, you will then receive a voucher to pick up your bicycle from them.
• Transport Season Ticket Loan: Employees can apply for an interest free season ticket loan to support your travel to work.
• Social Events: Frequent company wide social events including Christmas & summer parties, sports days, themed drinks, quizzes, cook alongs, as well as smaller team socials. We also have plenty of interest based groups such as football, running club, book club, culinary and more.