Director - Product Design (All Genders)

**Company Description**:

- More than 20 years ago, zooplus was one of the first to bring the pet category into the world of eCommerce. Today, we stand strong as Europe’s leading online pet platform, delivering moments of happiness to more than 9 million pet parents each year.

We're on a mission to create joy for pets and their parents, driven by our core values of **Care**, **Courage**, **Openness**, and **Simplicity**. At the heart of everything we do, they inspire us to grow, raise the bar for our customers and fuel a pet-first business.The Director Product Design will shape the experience design vision, strategy and roadmap for Z+ key products, aiming to transform Z+ into a world-class web & app customer experience. The Director Product Design is responsible for managing a team of product designers and is overseeing the entire design process from concept to completion. This role is critical to setting the strategic direction for Z+ products and will report directly to the Chief Product Officer.

Key Responsibilities:

- Lead and guide the overall customer experience design vision and strategy
- Develop and maintain product and UX design with stakeholders in product and engineering to ensure design solutions meet customer needs
- Design and develop UX/UI and product flows across platforms
- Research user behavior, customer insights, and industry trends to inform product design decisions
- Lead and mentor a team of product designers and ensure quality design, current team size is 30 people in the areas of acquisition & retention, shopping & order management, shared services/personalization & UX research.
- Foster a culture of innovation and creativity.
- Ensure the timely delivery of product design to support critical business requirements.
- Implement and manage design and UX research toolkits
- Have a broad knowledge of the UX practices. Share knowledge of tools and techniques with the wider design and product teams
- Set an example of and encourage positive and constructive communication both within the team and when communicating with other team.

The Director for Product Design must show case skills in the area of following:
Strategic/Visionary:

- Defining and executing upon a vision for design and UX within the Z+ portfolio of products
- Helping the CPO to define roadmaps, strategy, innovation and achievement of business outcomes (Product - Design - Engineering)
- Define design guidelines to shape the end-to-end ecommerce customer experience with a focus on ease of use and value creation to promote a steady increase in overall adoption and retention.

Leadership:

- Leading and motivating a team of product and UX/UI designers, UX Resarchers by providing mentorship, coaching, regular feedback and thoughtful career pathing.
- Facilitating and developing a team that is both hyper-agile and always focused on the goal of creating value for the customer.
- Providing UX leadership using experience with analytics, research, design methodologies, and product launches to introduce best practices, scalable processes and design systems
- Being an advocate for the customer’s total experience of Z+ product across all touchpoints

Values:

- Servant Leadership and mentorship skills
- Expertise in UX/UI, product, product design, and research UX
- Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams
- Ability to work independently and manage own tasks
- Excellent problem-solving and communication skills
- Ability to prioritize, multi-task and stay organized
- Results-oriented with a high level of accuracy and attention to detail
- Passionate about design, customer experience and product development

**Qualifications**:

- 10 plus years experience leading product design teams in a tech company, preferably in the B2C pet industry or ecommerce industry
- Strong understanding of product development and design processes.
- Excellent project management, problem-solving, and communication skills.
- Ability to thrive in an intercultural and diverse team.
- Experience with product design software and tools.
- Experience in driving design strategy and processes
- Experience in leading design teams with proven ability to hire and grow talent
- Extensive experience in building products and having an industry knowledge in pet, retail or FMCG industry
- Experience operating in ambiguity
- Strong product intuition, showcasing deep user empathy
- Demonstrated ability to help a team navigate loosely defined problems and complexity into a cohesive vision and strategy
- Strong experience in building collaborative partnerships across multi-disciplinary teams
- Excellent communication skills, both written and spoken, with the ability to influence and communicate cross-functionally, interculturally and at all levels of the organization / Highly polished communication skills - speaking, writing, presenting and negotiating
- Ability to think and navigate in a fast-paced environment
- High business development skill set, agile