Product Design Lead

Product Design Lead

Confidential Client | Abu Dhabi, UAE

Salary: AED 30,000–35,000 per month

Reports to: Head of Design

Team: Leading 3+ product designers, supported by a design technologist

Experience: 8+ years in product/UX design, with strong stakeholder leadership

Languages: Fluent Arabic and English (essential)

About the Role

Our client is at the forefront of AI transformation in the UAE, delivering digital services within the Abu Dhabi government ecosystem. They are building an AI-first design team and are looking for a Product Design Lead to bring clarity, leadership and direction.

This is not a hands-on Figma role. The team already has a strong, mature design system and a design technologist, and AI tools handle much of the work of turning ideas into interfaces and prototypes. Your value is in leadership: understanding problems, making decisions, guiding stakeholders and developing your team.

Much of your time will be spent with business and government stakeholders who don’t have a design background. You’ll need the confidence to bring structure to ambiguity, challenge assumptions, say no when it’s the right answer, and steer conversations to clear decisions.

What You’ll Do

• Lead, coach and develop a team of around three product designers, helping them become more autonomous and outcome-driven
• Act as the design voice with senior business, technology and government stakeholders, translating design thinking for people from non-design backgrounds
• Bring clarity when requirements, stakeholders or systems are complex, and turn competing views into clear decisions
• Challenge assumptions constructively and push back when needed, rather than simply saying yes
• Facilitate workshops and discussions, negotiating direction and priorities
• Map user journeys, flows, processes and system interactions, focusing on how services work end to end
• Work with the design technologist and the existing design system to rapidly prototype and test ideas using AI
• Guide how the design system is used, governed and evolved across products
• Plan and run usability testing, and turn findings into actionable improvements
• Turn ideas into compelling stories that stakeholders understand and support
• Make decisions and keep things moving without waiting for perfect information

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of product/UX design experience, with a strong track record of stakeholder management in complex organisations
• Proven experience leading designers and influencing senior non-design stakeholders
• Hands-on experience working with design systems (how they are used, governed and scaled)
• A confident, decisive leader who brings clarity and is comfortable with difficult conversations
• Excellent facilitation, negotiation and storytelling skills
• Strong grounding in user research and usability testing, and in journey and systems thinking
• Fluent Arabic and English (essential)
• Experience with government or similarly complex organisations is highly valuable
• Interest in AI-driven ways of working

Figma or hands-on visual design experience is not required. You should still recognise good design and hold the team to a high standard of quality, consistency and clarity.

How the Team Works

The team is fast-moving and led by a technically minded Head of Design. Designers aren’t measured by the number of screens they produce. The focus is on:

• Understanding the problem
• Making good decisions
• Connecting systems
• Testing assumptions
• Leading people
• Getting things done

What Success Looks Like

• Stakeholders trust your judgement, even when you challenge them
• Difficult conversations lead to decisions, not more meetings
• Your team knows what matters and why
• You create clarity from complexity

Lets have a chat and see what your next move could look like.