Lead Product Designer (Connectivity)

About the Role

We're hiring a hands-on Design Leader to join our Connectivity team at Deel. The Connectivity team sits at the heart of Deel's platform infrastructure — enabling partnerships, integrations, developer experience, and operational tooling that powers Deel's evolution from a standalone product into a true platform.

You'll own design across highly technical and strategic surfaces: API and developer ecosystems, the app store, white-label solutions, partner portals, and AI-powered customer experiences like Deel Inbox. These products serve a diverse set of stakeholders — from enterprise clients to startup developers to internal ops teams — and require someone who can bring both system-level thinking and sharp execution to the work.

We're looking for someone who gets deep into product work, has a strong doer mindset, thinks big, and moves fast. This is a different kind of leadership. Not decks, not endless strategy debates, not big-org politics. It's about leading by doing. Setting the bar. Shipping strong work. Raising others through example.

It's a hybrid role: you'll lead a small team and still design yourself.

What You'll Do

• ~30% Vision. Partnering with PDE Directors to shape the long-term direction of Deel's Connectivity platform. Connecting dots across journeys. Challenging existing paradigms. Creating a unified, coherent experience across API docs, integration flows, partner-facing tools, and AI-powered surfaces.
• ~40% Operator mode. Working directly with designers on active platform, B2B, and developer-facing projects. Tightening UX. Solving complexity. Raising quality in real time. Translating technical constraints into intuitive, self-serve user flows.
• ~30% Team leadership. Managing and developing a small team through hands-on collaboration. Creating clarity. Raising the bar. Putting them first. Coaching and mentoring designers to elevate craft and invest more consistently in research and data.

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years in Product Design, 3+ years operating at a very senior IC level (Lead / Staff)
• No less than 1.5 years of experience managing designers (up to 5 direct reports)
• Experience at scale-ups, tech companies or developer platform companies
• Experience with API/developer products, integrations, or platform ecosystems — this is a strong plus and central to this role
• Strong craft across interaction and visual design; comfortable across B2B, developer, and enterprise surfaces
• Experience designing for documentation, onboarding flows, and developer-facing UX
• Comfortable with complex system architecture and technical constraints
• AI: Curiosity about AI and emerging technologies; experience designing AI-assisted or AI-powered product experiences, or using AI tools as part of your design workflow. A portfolio that includes examples of work related to AI-powered features, AI-assisted workflows, or experiments with AI tools.
• Experienced in multi-sided platform design (developers, partners, end-users)
• Data-savvy; comfortable measuring success through adoption and integration metrics
• Solid understanding of both enterprise and startup needs

You Should Be Someone Who

• Thrives in velocity and doesn't wait for perfect clarity
• Makes good decisions under pressure
• Puts the team first and holds a high bar for yourself and others
• Leads by example through strong IC contribution
• Can facilitate execution while raising — not lowering — the quality bar
• Cares about details and outcomes
• Integrates research into product decisions naturally