Product Design Manager - Design System

Description

The company is an all-in-one financial platform in Africa, offering payments, banking, credit and business management tools. Since 2019 it has served 10 million businesses and individuals.

It is Nigeria's largest merchant acquirer and, through its subsidiaries, powers most of the country's Point of Sale (POS) transactions. Those subsidiaries process $22 billion a month, and the company operates profitably.

Its customers are shop owners, traders and entrepreneurs, many new to digital products, often using low-end devices on unreliable networks. One confusing screen can cost them a sale, so the design has to work for everyone regardless of ability or device.

You will lead a small team of product designers and own what they ship: its quality, how it works as one product, and the results it delivers for customers and the business.

The team works either on customer products across POS, mobile and web, or on the internal operational tools staff use to serve customers.

This is a hands-on role. You will build the systems the team works within and take on the hardest problems yourself.

Hiring process: a recruiter conversation about your background, next move and practical details; a case study review where you walk a design leader through one or two case studies in depth, one from your own work and one from a team you led; a live leadership challenge working through a product and team problem with two design leaders; and a final interview with the hiring manager.

Responsibilities

• Define the design direction for your area, turn it into plans with milestones and measurable outcomes, and present it to senior leaders in terms of customers and the business.
• Work with product partners so each designer starts from a clear, well-framed brief, and raise problems with unready briefs early.
• Keep each customer journey coherent across teams and resolve conflicting designs before launch.
• Lead critiques and design reviews against a definition of done that includes accessibility, staying close enough to the work to stop anything below the bar from reaching customers.
• Decide which designs must be tested with customers before build and which can ship and be measured afterwards. Build that validation into delivery, with success metrics defined upfront.
• Make sure journeys use the design system, handling market and product variations inside it rather than rebuilding. Plan and staff system contributions like any other project.
• Build trusted partnerships with product and engineering so design shapes what gets built and stays aligned through delivery.
• Hire, set clear expectations, give direct feedback, and create a growth path for each designer.
• Bring AI tools into the team's design process, model responsible use in your own work, and build the team's fluency with them.

Requirements

• 10+ years of product design experience, with shipped mobile and web work whose portfolio shows the problem, your decisions and the results.
• 3+ years managing product designers, including hiring, coaching and career development.
• Experience setting design direction for a product area and leading a team to deliver it.
• Experience running a design quality practice, such as critique, design reviews and a definition of done, that raised the quality of shipped work.
• Experience building shared patterns or templates that were adopted across teams, products or markets.
• Experience shipping accessible, inclusive products for people with disabilities, people new to digital products, and people on limited devices and connectivity.
• Experience using AI tools in design work and building that skill across a team.
• Strong plus: experience designing for POS terminals.
• Also welcome: experience in financial services, across multiple markets, or with operational tools.

Conditions

The role is remote-friendly.

Benefits

• Competitive pay and benefits, along with career growth opportunities.
• A fully remote work culture.
• Support for professional development and access to learning resources.
• A leadership role in shaping the future of fintech, with work that reaches millions of users.
• A culture that encourages experimentation, new ideas and rapid iteration.