Product Design Lead

Distilled

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Daft.ie is Ireland’s largest property portal, with a mission to make buying and selling property simple for everyone across the country. With over 3 million users visiting our website and apps every month, we’re driven by the opportunity to enhance the home buying and selling experience. If you’re excited to do impactful work that reaches hundreds of thousands of people daily, this could be the perfect role for you. We’re seeking a Product Design Lead who is a great UI designer and can combine strong Design leadership with a focus on user advocacy and measurable commercial impact.

Requirements

6+ years in Product or UX Design, including 6-12 months in a leadership or mentorship capacity.
Commercial Awareness: Demonstrated experience delivering designs that move business metrics, such as engagement, monetisation, or retention, while prioritising user needs.
Strong UI/UX Design Craft: Exceptional ability to deliver high-fidelity, polished user interface designs and prototypes, informed by strong strategic design thinking.
UX Craft & Research: Strong grasp of user research, usability testing, and behaviour-driven design, using insights to inform decisions.
Experience using Qualitative and Quantitative Research: Experienced in combining qualitative insights (interviews, usability testing) with quantitative data (analytics, experimentation, surveys) to inform strategy and validate design hypotheses.
Skilled in leveraging insights from Hotjar, Wootric and Google Analytics to identify opportunities, measure impact and enhance user experience.
Process design / improvement: Experience in improving design processes and working to ensure that the design team is set up for success.
Tools & Systems: Expert in Figma, Miro, and modern design system management, with an understanding of front-end technologies.
Collaboration: Able to work effectively with Product Managers and Engineers, translating between user empathy, product priorities and business impact.
Communication: A natural storyteller who can articulate design rationale clearly to technical and non-technical audiences alike.

Responsibilities

Champion User Value and Drive Marketplace Impact
Partner with Product Managers to craft experiences that drive user engagement, conversion and advertiser success.
Use research and data to find friction points in the user journey and identify high-impact opportunities that support Daft’s commercial strategy.
Collaborate with Product, Engineering and Commercial teams to connect user value with business objectives.
Lead and Elevate the Design Function and Hands-On Execution
Model high standards for design quality and execution, with a strong emphasis on UX/UI craft.
Establish and evolve design processes that align closely with product delivery rhythms, ensuring design is a strategic partner, not a downstream function.
Guide, mentor and inspire a small team of two experienced and talented product designers, fostering growth, collaboration and accountability.
Lead user testing and usability validation, ensuring every major release improves experience and engagement.
Collaborate closely with engineers to ensure smooth handover and pixel-perfect execution.
Shape Design Vision and Strategy
Define a compelling design vision for Daft’s marketplace, ensuring clarity and consistency across web and app platforms.
Champion the user’s perspective while balancing the realities of business goals, timelines, and technical constraints.
Drive continuous evolution of our design system to enable scalability, speed and cohesive brand expression.