Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Senior Director of Product Design role stands out in SaaS because it sits at the intersection of platform maturity and product expansion: scaling a coherent design system while evolving an AI-enabled B2B product used in day-to-day workflows. The remit signals an organisation where design is expected to shape product direction, not only polish interfaces, and where trust, usability, and consistency matter across complex, integrated capabilities.
From a SaaS career perspective, the role offers leverage in the areas that tend to compound over time: building repeatable design operations, aligning design with measurable product outcomes, and partnering tightly with Product, Engineering, Data, and go-to-market functions. Experience driving experimentation, translating customer insight into roadmap decisions, and setting quality bars for AI experiences is broadly transferable across modern subscription products—especially those serving professional users with high expectations for reliability.
This position is best suited to a senior design leader who enjoys coaching and setting standards while staying close enough to the work to influence critical initiatives. It will fit someone motivated by cross-functional decision-making, systems thinking, and the practical challenges of scaling design practices as the product surface area grows.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the role
We’re looking for a Senior Director of Product Design to lead our high-caliber design team as we expand our premium product position. You’ll set product design direction, scale the team and design systems, and partner with executive leadership, Product, and Engineering to deliver industry-leading capabilities in a coherent, high-quality, AI-powered practice management platform for accounting firms.
Key responsibilities
- Support and grow the design team: Coach, unblock, and enable designers to do their best work, while strengthening day-to-day collaboration with Product and Engineering.
- Develop talent: Hire and grow design talent, define expectations and career pathways, provide actionable feedback, and build a culture of learning and continuous improvement.
- Foster a constructive design culture: Model curiosity, ownership, high standards, data driven, experimentation, and thoughtful critique.
- Build scalable practices and processes: Establish lightweight, repeatable ways of working that improve clarity, speed, and consistency as we scale.
- Advocate for the customer experience: Bring the voice of accounting firms into product decisions through research, insights, support data, and customer collaboration—ensuring we solve the right problems.
- Drive measurable outcomes: Partner with Product, Customer, Sales, and Data teams to define and improve success metrics and speed through iteration and experimentation.
- Roll up your sleeves when needed: Work alongside the team to produce concepts and detailed designs for high-impact initiatives.
- Define and communicate design vision: Co-create and articulate the product experience vision with executive leadership and design, product, and engineering leaders.
- Lead trusted AI experiences: Drive AI approach to solutions that deliver user confidence and create long-term value
- Champion great design: Set a high bar for usability and aesthetics, advocate for systems thinking, and ensure quality.
What we’re looking for
- 10+ years in product design, including leadership experience in B2B SaaS
- Proven ability to lead in a scale-up environment
- Strong portfolio demonstrating complex systems design, interaction design, edge cases, and design systems
- Track record of building teams, coaching leaders/ICs, and establishing scalable design practices
- Experience delivering AI-enabled features that solve meaningful customer problems
- Clear communicator and strong cross-functional partner across Product, Engineering, and GTM
- Bonus: Vertical SaaS experience in accounting/tax/payroll/audit or professional services
Why Work at Karbon?
- Gain global experience across USA, New Zealand, UK, and Canada
- 4 weeks annual leave plus 5 extra "Karbon Days" off a year
- Flexible working environment
- Work with (and learn from) an experienced, high-performing team
- Be part of a fast-growing company that firmly believes in promoting high performers from within
- A collaborative, team-oriented culture that embraces diversity, invests in development, and provides consistent feedback
- Generous parental leave
