Product Design Lead

About the role

The client is building an AI‑first design team within the Abu Dhabi government ecosystem and needs a Product Design Lead to provide strategic direction, stakeholder leadership and team development. This senior role focuses on guiding complex projects, translating design thinking for non‑design stakeholders, and leveraging AI tools to accelerate prototyping.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, coach and develop a team of three product designers, fostering autonomy and outcome‑driven work.
• Act as the design voice with senior business, technology and government stakeholders, turning ambiguous requirements into clear decisions.
• Facilitate workshops, negotiate priorities, and map end‑to‑end user journeys, flows and system interactions.
• Collaborate with the design technologist and existing design system to rapidly prototype and test ideas using AI tools.
• Guide the governance and evolution of the design system across products, and run usability testing to generate actionable improvements.

Required profile

• 8+ years of product/UX design experience with strong stakeholder management in complex organisations.
• Proven leadership of designers and influence over senior non‑design stakeholders.
• Fluent in Arabic and English.
• Experience in government or similarly complex environments is highly valuable.

Required skills

• Hands‑on experience with design systems (usage, governance, scaling).
• Strong grounding in user research, usability testing, journey and systems thinking.
• Ability to leverage AI‑driven design tools for rapid prototyping.