Head of Product Design

About the Role

This is a senior design leadership role at a fast-growing, Series A-backed AI procurement intelligence company serving large industrial customers across Europe. The platform combines AI agents with human expertise to make high-impact cost decisions — including should-costing, supplier benchmarking, and contract leakage — legible, trustworthy, and actionable for non-analyst buyers.

As Head of Product Design, you will define how humans and AI agents collaborate across the product, build and lead a team of ~4 product designers, and establish design as a strategic partner within the product trio (product, engineering, and design). This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who moves fluidly between vision-setting and pixel-level craft.

The role is based on-site in Munich, Germany. Visa sponsorship is not available.

What You'll Do

• Define the interaction paradigm for an agent-native product — where AI agents execute procurement workflows and human buyers supervise, steer, and handle exceptions.
• Create mental models, UI patterns, and frameworks that make complex procurement decisions legible and trustworthy for industrial buyers.
• Translate technical procurement concepts (e.g. should-costing, raw material indices, contract leakage) into accessible, actionable UX for non-analyst users.
• Own and evolve the design system and component architecture to support agent-driven development and rapid iteration.
• Build, hire, and lead a team of ~4 product designers, setting standards for craft, speed, and strategic impact.
• Establish and lead a UX research program — from planning and participant recruiting to study execution and insight synthesis — that drives product strategy.
• Drive company-wide user understanding and advocate for real user problems across the organisation.
• Champion design as a strategic partner alongside product and engineering.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 6+ years in product design, with 2+ years leading design teams at high-growth technology companies known for design excellence.
• Proven experience hiring, building, and managing a product design team of ~4 and establishing team processes and standards.
• Proven experience owning a UX research program end-to-end (planning, recruiting, conducting studies, synthesising insights).
• Deep experience designing data-heavy, workflow-driven enterprise products — making information density an asset rather than a liability.
• Direct experience designing for enterprise procurement or complex B2B procurement workflows, with the ability to translate concepts like should-costing and contract leakage into clear UX.
• Genuine fluency with AI as a design material — a clear point of view on LLMs, agents, and human-automation collaboration.
• Strong systems thinking: you design in frameworks and patterns, not just individual screens.
• Demonstrated ability to move between strategic leadership and hands-on craft as the situation demands.
• Fluent in English (written and spoken).

Nice to Have:

• German language skills (a plus, not required).
• Experience at or with industrial, manufacturing, or supply chain organisations.
• Background at companies in AI-enabled enterprise software, procurement tech, or complex B2B SaaS.

Location & Work Arrangement

Location: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Work arrangement: On-site

Visa sponsorship: Not available — candidates must have the right to work in Germany