Head of Product Design, Retail

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Lightspeed Retail is seeking an experienced and visionary Head of Design to lead our product design organization. This pivotal role will be responsible for defining and executing the design strategy across our entire suite of retail products, ensuring a cohesive, intuitive, and delightful user experience. You will build, mentor, and inspire a world-class team of product designers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and user-centricity. This role requires a strategic thinker with a strong design-thinking background, capable of translating complex business needs into elegant and impactful design solutions.

As our Head of Product Design for Retail, you'll be instrumental in shaping the entire Lightspeed Retail experience ecosystem, encompassing Wholesale, In-store Selling, and Online channels. Your leadership will ensure a cohesive, seamless, and highly competitive experience that directly impacts merchants in the real world, empowering them to build thriving businesses. You'll set the strategic design vision for our Retail products and be accountable for your team's collective performance and delivery.

Eligible candidates must be based in eastern Canada or the United States. 

What you’ll be doing:

• Global Design Leadership & Vision: Lead, mentor, and empower a diverse team of product designers across North America, EMEA, and APAC. Define and champion the overall design vision and strategy for Lightspeed Retail products, ensuring alignment with business objectives and user needs across our entire product portfolio, including those with AI-driven features.
• Empowering Autonomous Teams: Foster an environment where designers embedded in highly autonomous product teams ("squads") can collaborate effectively through both synchronous and asynchronous methods, driving design quality and efficiency.
• User Experience Excellence: Oversee the end-to-end design process, from research and ideation to prototyping, testing, and implementation, ensuring an exceptional user experience across all touchpoints.
• Strategic Cross-Functional Partnership: Serve as an equal partner to senior leaders in Product and Engineering, influencing product strategy and collaborating deeply to build innovative products that customers love and are willing to invest in, including those leveraging AI.
• Cultivating a Culture of Innovation: Instill and amplify a culture of innovation within the Design team and across the organization, actively identifying and celebrating groundbreaking ideas—especially those that explore the frontiers of AI in user experience.
• Partner with Design System: Facilitate healthy contribution to the Design System, ensuring its growth accommodates new interaction patterns and components required for AI-driven experiences, in close partnership with Engineering.
• User Research & Insights: Advocate for and drive user research initiatives to deeply understand customer needs, behaviors, and pain points, translating insights into actionable design improvements.
• Building Organizational Trust & Advocacy: Develop strong, trusted relationships across the entire organization, leveraging your influence and industry connections to advocate for the design team and champion the value of design thinking, particularly in the context of intelligent systems.

What you need to bring:

We are looking for a seasoned design leader who is passionate about user experience, team development, and the transformative potential of technology. You should have:

• Extensive Product Design Expertise, Mentorship & Holistic Thinking: At least # years of practical, in-house product and/or consumer-facing UX/UI and visual design experience, with a minimum of # years in a people management role on a Design team. You'll demonstrate an eagerness and ability to work across all digital, AI-powered, and, where applicable, physical manifestations of what we design, ensuring cohesive and intuitive experiences
• Enterprise advocacy and influence, especially within technology-driven sectors, is highly preferred. You should also possess a passion for mentoring executives, product managers, and engineers to deliver truly user-centered solutions, particularly as they integrate and leverage AI. 
• Acute Empathy & Self-Awareness: A deep understanding of human behavior and needs, coupled with profound empathy for both our customers (and their relationship with AI) and your team's goals.
• Evolutionary Technology Perspective: A tenured, forward-thinking perspective on technology, product development, and design practices, with a specific understanding of the evolving landscape and implications of Artificial Intelligence.
• Applied Service Design: Demonstrated experience with service design practices and a commitment to continuously evolving your design process to encompass end-to-end user journeys that may include AI interactions.
• Exceptional Communication & Visualization: Outstanding communication and data visualization skills. You can eloquently articulate design decisions, bring internal stakeholders on your design journey, and concisely support your recommendations, especially when explaining complex AI interactions and their impact.
• Technical Design Proficiency: Expert proficiency in Figma, a strong understanding of Storybook, and a demonstrated ability to quickly adapt to and leverage new tools and technologies relevant to modern product design and AI integration.
• Portfolio: A strong portfolio demonstrating exceptional UX/UI design skills, strategic thinking, and successful product launches.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field; Master's degree preferred.

We know that people are more than what’s on their CV. If you’re unsure that you have the right profile for the role... hit the ‘Apply’ button and give it a try!

You’ll enjoy:

• A flexible work environment that empowers you to do your best work
• A culture that celebrates performance
• The chance to make an impact in a team that’s big enough for career growth, but lean enough to make your voice heard
• Career-defining opportunities

Plus benefits designed to keep you happy, healthy and fulfilled.

• Flexible paid time off and remote work policies 
• Equity options, because this is your company too
• Contributions to your pension plan. Your future matters
• Training opportunities to grow your skills and career
• Health and wellness credit so you feel your best
• Time off to volunteer and give back to your community
• Interest groups, employee led networks, social committees to sponsored sports teams
• Computer purchase program to get your personal Macbook
• Enhanced parental leave to support growing families

Fuel your growth. Find your people.

At Lightspeed, we carefully consider a wide range of factors when determining compensation, including your skillset, qualifications, experience, and market data. These considerations can cause your compensation to vary. We reasonably expect the base salary for this position to be in the range of $225,000 - 300,000 USD, depending on the candidate’s location. Additionally, this role may be eligible for discretionary short-term and long-term incentives. Lightspeed also provides a variety of employee benefits including, but not limited to, medical, dental, wellness, life and disability insurance, 401K plan and match, paid parental leave top-up, and paid time off. 

Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within the United States, and refers to the amount Lightspeed is willing to pay at the time of this posting, which may vary depending on the candidate’s actual location. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

#LI-DS1

To all recruitment agencies: Lightspeed does not accept unsolicited agency resumes. If we have not directly engaged your company in writing to supply candidates for a specific vacancy, Lightspeed will not be responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

Lightspeed is a proud equal opportunity employer and we are committed to creating an inclusive and barrier-free workplace. Lightspeed welcomes and encourages applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Where to from here?
Obviously, this has to be mutually beneficial: we want you to step into a role you love, and we want to offer you a place you’re proud to come to every day. For a glimpse into our world check out our career page here.

Lightspeed is building communities through commerce, and we need people from all backgrounds and lived experiences to do that. We were founded in 2005, in Montreal’s gay village and our original members were all part of the LGBTQ+ community. The ethos of our business has been about inclusion from the very beginning, and we strive to provide a workplace where everyone belongs.

Who we are:
Powering the businesses that are the backbone of the global economy, Lightspeed's one-stop commerce platform helps merchants innovate to simplify, scale, and provide exceptional customer experiences. Our cloud commerce solution transforms and unifies online and physical operations, multichannel sales, expansion to new locations, global payments, financial solutions, and connection to supplier networks.