Head of Product Design, Runna

• We are looking for a talented, creative and positive team player to join our highly-skilled Product Design Team to help design new features for our iOS, Android and Apple watch applications and third-party integrations (Garmin, Strava, Coros, Suunto etc)
• 7+ years experience in Product Design, currently working as a ‘CDO’, ‘Head of Design’ or ‘Lead’ (or equivalent) level designer
• Experience mentoring, managing and hiring both senior and junior designers
• Experience with mobile apps
• Experience designing for large-scale user basis with a strong emphasis on user-first principles. Ideally this includes B2C products or B2B platforms with extensive user communities (e.g., Slack, Figma etc)
• A design generalist; while you may have developed a specialism, you are an expert on everything design from testing and research to FIGMA and design systems
• Experience working closely with product and engineering teams in delivery
• Enjoy championing design across the organisations you’ve worked at
• Love speaking to users to understand needs, in order to solve problems as effectively as possible
• Played a big part in evolving design processes, creating amazing team atmospheres and are seen as the ‘core’ of the design teams you’ve worked in
• Obsess over small details that take designs to the next level (e.g., perfect pixel alignment, interaction, animations) as much as the bigger picture problems (are we really building the right thing)

Desirable

• You will work closely with our founders, designers, engineers, PM and most importantly customers, to help shape the future of Runna, who will be there to support you all the way along this exciting journey
• As a Head of Design your role will to own the full end-to-end product design lifecycle at Runna from research and discovery to design and development
• Lead, Mentor and line manage all of the design team at Runna (more on this below!)
• Working with the whole design and product team as well as our amazing customers to discover and prioritise user’s needs across their journey
• Leading user research, testing, UI and UX strategy along with our amazing product design team, ensuring consistent and high quality work
• Owning design team culture, making it positive, inclusive, accountable and fun!
• Be the voice for Design within the company, advocating at all levels
• Lead design processes, meetings, calls, ways of working and more
• Lead all hiring as we significantly grow our design team in 2025
• Work collaboratively with Engineers, Product Managers and everyone across the wider company to make quick decisions in a collaborative environment
• Own the design roadmaps and backlogs and collaborate with Product on Product Roadmaps
• You will be reporting directly to Dom (Co-Founder and CEO)
• We currently have three amazing designers at Runna - Alp (UI/UX Design Lead), Celine (Product Designer) and Misha (Senior Product Designer) and we would like to grow our design team to more than 5 people by June
• That means as well as managing our current team, you’ll be immediately hiring for 1-2 roles with more in the second half of the year
• In addition, we’d also love you to own our hiring strategy → UK or US, senior or junior, ‘full-stack’ or specialist design roles, beginner runners (to empathise with new users) or experienced runners who really understand the demographic/problems
• Finally, Runna is growing incredibly quickly and we reinvest all of our profits into building a better product
• As such the design team will be scaling quickly over the coming years as will your role and responsibilities!
• We are looking for candidates based in London or Boston, as well as New York with the ability to travel to Boston once per month
• You will get to travel between our offices every ~6 months too!
• We’re open to exploring a 3 month contract initially to see if it’s a good fit for both parties

• Our aim is to keep the interview process as straightforward and enjoyable as possible
• However, for senior roles such as this the process is extended such that (1) you can really get a feel for the team and company before accepting an offer and (2) we have full understanding of your skills across all areas
• Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to better accommodate you throughout the interview process - this can be from scheduling interviews around childcare commitments to accessibility requirements. We want you to show your best self in the process ❤️
• Quick screening call with Em (Talent Lead)
• Introductory chat with Dom (25 minutes video call - covering your design experience to date)
• Detailed experience, portfolio and user testing/research interview with Dom (50 minutes video call - the first half will be a portfolio review and any experience we didn’t cover previously. Then second half on user testing / research)
• Take home design task (~2-3 hours to complete)
• UI/UX review and app critique with Dom and Alp (50 minutes video call - the first part will be used to discuss the design task from the previous stage and the second talking through an app that you know well)
• Whiteboard challenge with Dom and a Principal PM or Senior Product Designer (50 minutes video call)
• Hiring, management and design team leadership interview with Dom and Milly (Head of People) (30 minutes video call)
• Meet the current team in-person (we’ll get you in to either our London or Boston offices and you’ll chat with and get to meet our Principal PMs, CTO and other designers)
• Once the process is finished, we promise to let you know our decision as soon as possible