Design Director

What you'll do:

Lead by Doing

• Balance leadership with hands-on design execution, working alongside teams to create and ship exceptional work.
• Apply deep expertise in product design, design systems, product strategy, and human-centred design to guide and refine work.
• Actively contribute to raising the bar for design excellence, providing clear and actionable feedback to project teams.

Client Engagement & Delivery Success

• Serve as a trusted design advisor to clients, guiding them through the design process, presenting work, managing feedback, and building strong relationships grounded in Metalab’s point of view on design direction and execution.
• Drive strategic project success by applying service design and change management principles.
• Partner with the Business Development team to scope work and identify strategic business development opportunities.

Advocacy & Leadership at Metalab

• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performance design culture.
• Partner with Metalab leadership to drive engagement and maintain a strong company culture.
• Hire, mentor, and develop design team members, ensuring a strong pipeline of leadership within the design team.
• Represent Metalab in the design community, attracting top talent and new business opportunities.

What we’re looking for:

Technical Expertise

• UX Design: You define UX quality standards, push teams toward innovation, and drive best practices across research, strategy, and execution.
• Visual Design: You champion high-quality visual execution and stay current on trends, emerging technologies, and tooling.
• Product Strategy: You ensure design work aligns with overarching product roadmaps, release strategies, and market positioning.
• Critique & Collaboration: You guide teams in fostering a culture of constructive critique, both internally and with clients.
• Research: You leverage qualitative and quantitative data to inform and validate design decisions.
• Content Design: You advocate for clear, compelling communication that aligns with brand strategy and user experience.

Leadership & Influence

• Selling Design: You craft compelling narratives that help clients understand and buy into design decisions.
• Vision: You lead teams in developing experience concepts, balancing business goals, user needs, and innovation.
• Creative Direction: You ensure the strategic and creative impact of all projects, guiding teams through execution and client presentations.
• Systems Design: You define scalable design systems that ensure usability, adoption, and long-term maintainability.
• Brand Strategy: You confidently lead brand workshops and strateg