Lead Product Designer

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.

Lead Product Designers help define, design and deliver seamless product experiences within a product area at Xero. Working on your own design tasks, as well as assisting others through design collaboration, feedback and mentorship. You’ll contribute to the design vision and direction, working with the Design team and key relationships with Product leaders within your product area. You’ll help define how we improve as a Design team by working closely with other Leads and Principals, as well as our Design Leadership Team.

In this
**_fixed term 9 parental leave cover role _**you’re not required to manage anyone as a Lead, but you will mentor others and lead by example, offering design critique, sharing your thoughts and domain knowledge, and helping others develop their skills and expertise. This could be anything from helping deliver the team’s professional development programme to hosting knowledge sharing sessions or even creating better processes that can be implemented across the wider team.

Leads also work closely with their Design Directors, building strong relationships with engineering leads and product managers to help influence prioritisation of work and roadmap items.

**What you'll do**:

- Partner closely with Design, Product, and Development leaders to set the design vision and direction for Search
- Partner closely with Design Research and Product colleagues to identify research opportunities, plan and undertake research and testing
- Promote the value of design and collaborative practice across spheres of influence and participation
- Present and communicate design work to a range of different audiences
- Challenge current solutions, by exploring ideal future concepts and identifying new interaction solutions and patterns that meet customer needs in a better way
- Create prototypes which tangibly demonstrate a proposed concept or solution
- Influence, challenge and support designers within your product area to deliver high quality product experiences
- Develop phased design solutions that bridge the gap between a future state and current patterns, XUI design system and other relevant constraints and considerations
- Develop detailed interactions and interfaces which are smart and contextually relevant
- Create effective handover materials which clearly communicate how the design should look and behave throughout interaction flows and journeys (e.g. User flow diagrams, design specifications, experience/interaction specifications etc)

**What you'll bring with you**:

- Track record of innovating and delivering complex design experiences at scale
- Track record of solving customers' problems through design thinking and execution
- A portfolio that demonstrates high-quality design outcomes, contributing to user experience and business value
- A mastery of the entire design process from uncovering customer needs and pain points, to executing elegant interfaces
- Excellent communication skills
- Experience working on platform products/features
- Experience working on information design (i.e. Information architecture)

Our collaborative and inclusive culture is one we’re immensely proud of. We know that a diverse workforce is a strength that enables businesses, including ours, to better understand and serve customers, attract top talent and innovate successfully. At Xero we embrace diversity and inclusion and value a #challenge mindset.

Xero is an NZ Immigration Accredited Employer and Rainbow Tick certified too.