Senior Product Designer

Who We’re Looking For

Zivio is a rapidly growing and ambitious procure-tech business. We are looking for a Senior Product Designer to take ownership of design across our award-winning platform and shape how it looks, feels and works.

Our customers include major multinational organisations and UK government agencies, who depend on the platform every working day. This is our first dedicated design role, and you will own it end to end — there is no existing design team and no house style to inherit, which means no committee and a genuine mandate to decide how this product should work and look.

Our platform is deep. It does a great deal, for demanding customers in regulated environments, and breadth like that brings its own design problems. Bringing coherence and craft to it is the job.

We operate in a highly agile environment, with multiple product releases each week. You will work closely with our small engineering team and the wider business, with a short path between a decision being made and it being live for customers.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role rather than a people-management position. You should be comfortable working collaboratively within the existing team structure and reporting to the CTO.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain the Zivio design system — foundations, components and patterns — in partnership with our engineers, so that it lives in the product rather than only in a design file
• Take ownership of design for medium to large product features from initial discussion through to release
• Audit and redesign core user journeys, identifying where users struggle and prioritising improvements with Technology Leadership
• Raise the standard of interaction detail across the platform — states, transitions, empty states, error handling and loading behaviour
• Design to WCAG 2.2 AA and help us hold that standard as the product grows
• Work closely with Technology Leadership and wider business stakeholders to understand requirements and priorities
• Speak directly to customers and use what you learn to inform design decisions
• Produce prototypes and specifications that engineers can build from without guesswork
• Advocate for improvements to product quality, usability, consistency and accessibility
• Contribute to product discussions and help the team make well-informed decisions

Requirements

• Significant commercial experience designing B2B or enterprise SaaS products
• Experience building or substantially rebuilding a design system, and getting it adopted by an engineering team
• Strong visual and interaction craft, evidenced by a portfolio of shipped product work
• Experience designing within products of real functional depth, treating complexity as a constraint to design within rather than a problem to sweep away
• Fluency with a modern product design tool and the systems thinking behind it — components, variables and design tokens. We have no incumbent tool, so this is yours to choose
• Enough understanding of front-end implementation — HTML, CSS and component architecture — to design work that can realistically be built
• Working knowledge of accessibility standards, particularly WCAG 2.2 AA
• Comfortable working remotely as part of a small, collaborative team
• Able to explain and defend design decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Comfortable working as a hands-on contributor rather than a people manager
• Comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy — nobody here will hand you a finished brief
• Formal design training, a relevant degree or equivalent practical experience
• Based in the UK within two hours’ travel of Brighton. Monthly company meetings in Brighton are mandatory

Nice to Have

• Experience as the first or only designer in a business
• Experience designing for public sector or otherwise regulated customers
• Experience designing data-dense interfaces — tables, filters, dashboards and reporting
• Experience designing alongside a Ruby on Rails and Hotwire / Stimulus front end
• Experience running user research and usability testing
• Experience with motion, micro-interaction and high-fidelity prototyping
• Experience working in a SaaS or start-up environment
• Experience with procurement, supply chain or finance software

Tools and Stack

• Design tooling of your choosing — we would expect Figma, and we are open to a case for something else
• The Zivio design system, which you will define
• Ruby on Rails 8
• Stimulus / Hotwire / JavaScript
• OpenAI / Claude LLMs

Day-to-Day Activities

• Deliver design work as part of our six-week development cycle
• Design solutions for medium to large product enhancements
• Build out and extend the design system as new patterns emerge
• Review implemented work against the design and feed back to engineers
• Participate in design discussions for new features and system improvements
• Work with stakeholders across the business to understand customer and product requirements
• Talk to customers and observe how the product is used in practice
• Contribute to the continued improvement of the product and the design process

Salary and Benefits

• £70,000 – £85,000 depending on experience
• Company pension scheme
• Vibrant and friendly team culture with regular socials
• 35 days’ holiday per year, inclusive of bank holidays
• Family-friendly working environment
• £750 annual learning and development budget
• Latest laptop provided, and the design software you need
• Paid tickets and time off to attend a design conference each year
• Electric Vehicle Salary Sacrifice and Cycle to Work schemes
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Sick pay
• Hybrid remote working

How to Apply

Please send your CV or LinkedIn profile along with a portfolio. We would rather see two or three projects in depth than a gallery of finished screens — particularly anything involving a design system, or the redesign of an existing product with real functional complexity. If your strongest work is covered by an NDA, tell us and we will work around it.

Our final interview stage is held in person in Brighton. We cover travel costs.

We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome all applications. Please let us know if you require any adjustments to support your application.

Job type: Full-time
Work location: Hybrid remote in Brighton, BN1 1YR

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: From £70,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Cycle to work scheme
• Enhanced maternity leave
• Enhanced paternity leave
• Sick pay
• Work from home

Application question(s):

• Are you located within 2 hours travel of Brighton? It is mandatory to attend once a month whole company events in Brighton.

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Brighton BN1 1YR