Design Director, Product Design & AI (m/f/d)

Edenspiekermann is an independent design consultancy with more than 40 years of experience helping organizations invent, build, and evolve their products. The Design Director will lead complex digital-product, design-system, and AI-enabled engagements, guiding multidisciplinary teams, senior clients, and the development of scalable product experiences and workflows.

Responsibilities:

• Lead client engagements end-to-end, from initial framing and design direction through delivery, adoption, and continuous improvement
• Translate user needs, business goals, brand intent, accessibility, engineering, content, and compliance requirements into clear product and system direction
• Own the design quality of the work, balancing strategic clarity with strong visual, interaction, and systems-design craft
• Direct the creation and evolution of scalable Figma libraries, component architectures, variables, tokens, themes, patterns, prototypes, and documentation
• Work closely with product and engineering leaders to connect design decisions with production code, release processes, and measurable product outcomes
• Establish practical governance and contribution models that support distributed teams without overloading a small central group
• Facilitate workshops and decision-making with senior stakeholders across design, product, engineering, research, content, and compliance
• Guide multidisciplinary teams, coach designers, set a high bar for craft, and give clear, constructive direction
• Make AI part of the design practice every day, using it for research synthesis, ideation, content, prototyping, design-system work, and design-to-code exploration
• Prototype AI-enabled product experiences, including conversational, adaptive, generative, and agentic interactions, then test whether they create meaningful value for people
• Experiment quickly with new tools and models, share what works, and help the team build repeatable AI workflows instead of one-off demos
• Evaluate AI output critically and establish practical guardrails for quality, accessibility, privacy, approved source material, human review, and accountability
• Help shape Edenspiekermann's AI-enabled product and design-systems practice, contributing to how we pitch, deliver, and talk about the work

Requirements:

• You have at least 8 years of experience in product design, UX/UI design, or design systems, including several years leading complex client or enterprise engagements
• Your portfolio demonstrates systems thinking, refined visual craft, shipped digital products, and credible AI-enabled work
• You have led design systems across multiple products, platforms, brands, or teams and understand how they connect to Figma libraries, production code, documentation, versioning, and engineering adoption
• You have experience in a regulated or high-accountability environment and treat accessibility as a system requirement
• You can lead senior client conversations, facilitate difficult decisions, and turn ambiguity into a practical path forward with curiosity, judgment, and a collaborative, low-ego attitude
• You actively use generative and agentic AI in your own practice, can demonstrate workflows beyond surface-level prompting, and can separate useful applications from hype
• You communicate fluently in English and are comfortable collaborating across US and European teams
• You are based in Southern California, willing and able to travel to client sites across the United States as engagements require, and legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship