Product Design Director

Overview

As a Product Design Director at AKQA, you guide the end-to-end design of world-class digital products and brand experiences for premier clients from the London studio. You lead multi-disciplinary teams to craft human-centered, AI-enabled interfaces and adaptive design systems across multiple modalities. You shape brand-led experiences that blend craft, computation, and strategy, driving measurable impact and brand love. This role offers the chance to influence the future of digital experiences at scale within a globally connected network.

Responsibilities

• Lead concept, design, and delivery of high-impact digital products and experiences
• Partner with UX, Creative Technology, and AI Engineering to shape AI-native interfaces and generative UI systems
• Establish and evolve brand-led design systems for screen, voice, gesture, and spatial interfaces
• Embed accessibility from first principles ensuring WCAG compliance
• Drive experimentation across new modalities including voice, wearables, computer vision, and MR
• Mentor and grow a diverse team of product designers
• Collaborate with strategists and client partners to translate brand purpose into digital products
• Represent AKQA in new business opportunities, articulating design value in solving business and human challenges
• Contribute to AKQA’s culture of learning and discussion on design ethics, AI co-creation, and emerging interaction paradigms

Key requirements

• 10+ years in product or interaction design at leading studios or in-house
• Proven leadership delivering large-scale, multi-platform digital products from concept to launch
• Mastery of Figma and design-system workflows; experience with code-based interaction design software and no-code solutions
• Strong understanding of human-centered design, accessibility, motion, and micro-interactions
• Familiarity with AI design tools and prototyping in Framer, Principle, ProtoPie, or After Effects; collaboration with ML or data-science teams
• Proven ability to unite brand and product through interface design, including motion language, sound design, or spatial storytelling
• Experience mentoring mid- and senior-level designers and delivering creative excellence
• Comfort presenting to senior clients and executives in fast-paced environments
• Systems thinking with sensitivity to brand and narrative
• Calm, credible communicator with optimistic clarity in complexity
• Interest in emerging technologies and inclusive design

• leadership
• collaboration
• communication
• Figma
• design systems (tokens, auto-layout, component libraries)
• Framer

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