Director, Product Design

Payrails is a global payment software company helping leading enterprises to take control of their payment operations and maximize performance. With deep experience in the payments space and firsthand knowledge of merchants' challenges, we've seen how fragmented, complex, and inefficient these systems can become. Now, we are setting a new industry standard for how enterprises around the world manage and optimize payments, with more control, visibility and flexibility than ever before.

Our vision is to reimagine payments from the ground up. We are building a deeply integrated meta layer that spans the entire payment lifecycle with a modular architecture. This helps us give leading brands building blocks to craft solutions to most complex operational challenges, tailor seamless customer experiences and grow their business.

We are backed by some of the world's top investors including Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital, EQT Ventures and General Catalyst, who share our mission to simplify payment complexity globally.

At Payrails, we're committed to building a team of exceptional people - not just talented, but driven to build, solve, and deliver at the highest level. Excellence isn't just a value here; it's a way of working. We believe that great people thrive in environments where there's trust, clarity, and shared purpose. We work openly and collaboratively, with deep respect for each other's craft. Everyone is encouraged to understand the bigger picture - what we're building, why it matters, and what stands in the way. When people have that context, they move faster, take ownership, and make better decisions. We care about creating a culture where people feel inspired to do their best work and a deep sense of responsibility to help us bring our vision to life. Success at Payrails means staying focused on the problems that matter most, and executing with purpose.

Payrails is a dynamic workplace and our design team sits at the core of this landscape. Our mission is to drive a successful intersection between User Experience, Technology and Business. We do this by focusing on 3 main pillars:

• Understand merchant needs and challenges in their ecosystem 

• Identify simple and meaningful solutions

• Partner with product and engineering to think holistically about systems and architectures that come together to create pragmatic solutions

• Lead by example, actively contributing to design projects from concept through execution, balancing hands-on design work with strategic direction.

• Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, and stakeholders to tackle complex design problems and create user-centered solutions that align with both user needs and business objectives.

• Partner with product managers to prioritize design opportunities and translate them into actionable, high-quality deliverables.

• Guide and mentor a small but growing team of designers, fostering a collaborative, hands-on design culture where everyone contributes and innovates.

• Take ownership of our design system, working directly with front-end engineers to build and refine components that ensure consistency and efficiency across our product.

• Continuously drive alignment and facilitate design discussions with stakeholders to build consensus and move quickly, iterating as needed to keep pace with our fast-evolving startup environment.

• Balance strategic direction with tactical design tasks, including UI/UX design, prototyping, and interaction design in Figma, to directly impact our product's quality and user experience.

• You have 10+ years of hands-on product design experience, with at least 5 years leading design teams or projects in high-growth environments, ideally within startups or tech.

• You're skilled in Enterprise-level product design but enjoy being directly involved in the design process, from ideation to implementation.

• You thrive in ambiguous and fast-paced settings, able to shift seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on design tasks.

• You think holistically about user and business needs, keeping outcomes at the forefront while navigating trade-offs in a lean, startup setting.

• You are proficient in Figma and can create and iterate on high-quality, practical designs, articulating your decision-making process clearly.

• You're comfortable synthesizing feedback from different sources, making informed decisions quickly, and adapting to change.

• You bring a collaborative and proactive mindset, excellent communication skills, and the ability to inspire cross-functional partners.

• You have a portfolio that demonstrates your design thinking, problem-solving abilities, and measurable impact, especially in product ecosystems and complex domains like payments.

Please submit an up-to-date portfolio in English as part of your application.

• High impact and high velocity environment with the most talented and ambitious people you will ever work with

• A chance to shape the story of a company and a category from the ground up

• Real ownership. You'll have the freedom and trust to build, test, and take lead

• A product used by the best brands around the world

• Visa and relocation support for you and your family where required

• Hybrid working with an office in the heart of Berlin

• Regular team events, activities and off-sites

• Discounted Urban Sports Club membership

• Competitive salary and equity package

• 27 days of annual paid vacation