Senior Product Designer

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Senior Product Designer
Company: The Cruise Globe
Location: London, England, United Kingdom
Job Type: FULL_TIME
Category: Product Design / UX/UI
Date Posted: 2026-01-14
Experience Level: 5-10 Years
Remote Status: Hybrid (1 day in office)

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead the end-to-end redesign of the product's user experience (UX) and user interface (UI), ensuring a cohesive and intuitive journey for a diverse user base.
• Drive product strategy and decision-making through exceptional product taste, deep UX/UI craft, and a strong understanding of user needs, particularly for non-technical audiences.
• Establish and own a scalable UI style guide and design system to ensure consistency, quality, and speed as the product expands.
• Collaborate closely with Product Management, Data, Engineering, and the CEO to transform complex ideas into shippable, elegant, and user-friendly product features.
• Champion a fast-paced, iterative design process, leveraging AI prototyping tools and rapid user testing to validate concepts and refine designs efficiently.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is for a founding Senior Product Designer, implying a high degree of autonomy and influence over design direction, systems, and culture. The focus on "founding" and "CEO influence" suggests a strategic role critical to early product development and growth. The emphasis on "non-technical audience" and "older demographics" indicates a need for exceptional clarity, simplicity, and accessibility in design.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• End-to-End Product Experience Ownership: Lead the complete redesign of The Cruise Globe's UX/UI, ensuring a consistent, intuitive, and engaging experience across all content-heavy features and user journeys.
• User-Centric Design: Deeply understand the target audience, with a particular focus on older, non-technical users, to design for discoverability, clarity, simplicity, and confidence, applying progressive disclosure and thoughtful onboarding.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with the Senior Product Manager, Data Lead, and Engineering teams to translate strategic product vision into tangible, shippable product increments, providing developer-ready assets.
• Design System Development & Maintenance: Create, own, and evolve a scalable UI style guide and comprehensive design system to ensure design consistency, maintainability, and rapid feature expansion.
• Rapid Prototyping & Validation: Utilize advanced prototyping capabilities, including AI-powered tools, to rapidly explore design concepts, create interactive prototypes, and conduct iterative user testing to validate assumptions and drive informed design decisions.
• Strategic Design Influence: Actively contribute to product decision-making, providing design leadership and articulating design trade-offs, rationale, and progress directly to the CEO and executive team.
• Simplification of Complexity: Translate intricate concepts, such as cruise booking, social features, and user-uploaded content management, into elegant, intuitive, and human-centered interfaces.
• Quality & Iteration Focus: Maintain an obsessive focus on design quality and user satisfaction, owning product outcomes and driving continuous refinement of the user experience post-launch.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities emphasize a blend of strategic ownership and hands-on execution, typical of a founding design role in a startup. The explicit mention of "CEO influence" and "minimal bureaucracy" suggests a highly collaborative and direct reporting structure where design impact is immediate and measurable. The focus on "content-heavy features" and "user-uploaded content" indicates a need for robust information architecture and intuitive content management design.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no specific degree is mandated, a strong portfolio demonstrating equivalent knowledge and practical application is paramount. Proven experience in product design, UX, and UI principles is more critical than a formal educational background.

Experience: 5-10 years of progressive experience in Product Design, with a significant portion at a Senior level, demonstrating proven influence on product direction beyond execution.

Required Skills:

• Senior-Level Product Design Expertise: Demonstrable track record of influencing product strategy and direction, not just executing design tasks. Deep craft in both User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design.
• Figma Proficiency: Extreme fluency in Figma, including advanced use of components, variants, auto-layout, design systems, and interactive prototyping features.
• Advanced Prototyping Capabilities: Demonstrated ability to rapidly move from rough concepts to polished, interactive prototypes. Active and proficient use of AI prototyping tools (e.g., Figma AI, Framer, ProtoPie, Lovable, Uizard).
• User Testing Leadership: Proven ability to independently design and conduct user tests, recruit participants, run sessions, synthesize insights, and translate findings into actionable design improvements. Strong strategic understanding of when to test early versus later to minimize rework.
• Consumer Social Product Experience: Proven experience shipping consumer-facing social products, including features like feeds, profiles, user-generated content (UGC), interactions, notifications, and organic growth loops.
• Startup Environment Acumen: Proven comfort and success working in a startup environment, adept at handling ambiguity, operating at speed, making trade-offs, and working with incomplete data.
• Hands-On Individual Contributor: Ability and willingness to be a hands-on designer, focusing on execution and craft rather than design management.
• Exceptional Product Taste: Highly opinionated, quality-obsessed, and confident in articulating and defending design decisions with clear rationale.
• Design System Architecture: Experience designing and implementing scalable design systems that effectively support rapid feature growth without compromising user experience.
• Engineering Collaboration: Strong collaborative skills with engineering teams, understanding the impact of design decisions on build time, performance, and maintainability.
• Complexity Simplification: Exceptional ability to distill complex concepts into intuitive, human-centered interfaces.
• Broad Audience Design: Demonstrated experience designing for broad, non-technical consumer audiences, including those who are emotionally invested in their data and memories.
• Iterative Design & Ownership: A quality-obsessed, iterative approach, owning product outcomes and demonstrating comfort with refining designs post-launch.
• Small Team Agility: Thrives in small, fast-moving teams with a strong bias for action, learning, and iteration.

Preferred Skills:

• Strong interest in travel, particularly cruising.
• Experience designing specifically for older demographics.
• Experience with consumer products driven by growth and engagement metrics.
• Experience designing across both web and mobile platforms.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "Core Requirements" are framed as "Non-Negotiable," emphasizing the critical nature of these skills for the role. The emphasis on AI prototyping tools and user testing leadership highlights a forward-thinking approach to design validation and efficiency. The requirement for "consumer social product" experience is key, aligning with the platform's community and user-generated content aspects.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• End-to-End Case Studies: Showcase 2-3 detailed case studies that highlight your full product design process, from initial problem definition and user research through to final UI design, prototyping, and post-launch iteration.
• Demonstrated UX/UI Craft: Clearly illustrate your deep understanding and application of UX principles and UI design best practices, with a focus on clarity, simplicity, and intuitive user flows.
• Prototyping & Tool Proficiency: Provide examples of interactive prototypes created in Figma, demonstrating advanced usage of components, variants, auto-layout, and interactive features. Include examples of AI prototyping tool utilization if possible.
• Design System Examples: Showcase your experience in creating or contributing to design systems, illustrating how you ensure consistency, scalability, and efficiency across a product.
• User Testing & Iteration Evidence: Detail your approach to user testing, including how you gather insights and how those insights directly informed design iterations and improvements. Quantify impact where possible.
• Simplification of Complexity: Present examples where you successfully translated complex concepts or features into simple, elegant, and user-friendly interfaces, particularly for non-technical audiences.

Process Documentation:

• Workflow Design & Optimization: Portfolio pieces should implicitly or explicitly demonstrate your ability to map out and optimize user workflows, identifying pain points and designing solutions that enhance efficiency and user satisfaction.
• System Implementation Standards: Highlight your understanding of how design decisions integrate with development processes and how design systems contribute to efficient implementation and product scalability.
• Measurement & Performance Analysis: Where possible, showcase how your designs have contributed to measurable improvements in key product metrics (e.g., engagement, retention, conversion), and how you approach data analysis to inform design decisions.

📝 Enhancement Note: The portfolio requirements are tailored to validate the "Core Requirements," specifically focusing on hands-on craft, system thinking, user-centricity, and the ability to simplify complexity. The emphasis on demonstrating impact through user testing and potential metric improvements is crucial for a role that influences business growth.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: £65,000 - £90,000 per annum (estimated based on Senior Product Designer roles in London with hybrid/remote flexibility, requiring significant autonomy and startup experience).

Benefits:

• Competitive Salary: A market-competitive salary commensurate with experience and impact.
• Meaningful Equity: Opportunity to own a significant stake in the company's growth through equity.
• Flexible Working: Remote-first policy with the option to work from the London office one day per week, offering a balance between autonomy and in-person collaboration.
• Holiday Allowance: 25 days of paid holiday per year, in addition to public bank holidays.
• Pension Scheme: Auto-enrolment pension scheme to support long-term financial planning.
• Direct CEO Influence: A unique opportunity for direct interaction and influence with the CEO, shaping the company's product direction.
• Startup Energy & Ownership: A work environment characterized by less process, more ownership, and the chance to build and define optimal operational processes.

Working Hours: Standard full-time hours (estimated 40 hours per week), with flexibility offered due to the remote-first nature of the role, balancing project deadlines with personal work-life integration.

📝 Enhancement Note: The salary range is an estimate for a Senior Product Designer in London, reflecting the specified experience level (5-10 years) and the hybrid work arrangement. The inclusion of "Meaningful Equity" is a significant draw for startup roles, suggesting a strong alignment of employee and company success.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Technology, Travel (specifically Cruise Tech), Digital Platforms. The Cruise Globe operates at the intersection of these dynamic sectors, aiming to modernize a traditionally analog industry with digital innovation.

Company Size: Startup (early-stage, but with rapid user growth evidenced by 100k+ users and 500k+ cruises logged in under nine months without marketing spend). This implies a lean, agile, and highly collaborative environment.

Founded: Less than a year ago, indicating a very young company with a strong product-market fit already established, now poised for significant scaling and product evolution.

Team Structure:

• Lean & Agile: Small, dedicated teams focused on core functions: Product, Data, and Engineering.
• Direct Reporting: The Senior Product Designer reports directly to the CEO, indicating a high level of visibility and direct influence.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Strong emphasis on close collaboration between Design, Product, Data, and Engineering to ensure alignment and efficient product development.

Methodology:

• Data-Driven Design: Decisions are informed by user data and analytics, with a dedicated Data Lead.
• Iterative Development: Rapid exploration, prototyping, user testing, and shipping are core to the development cycle.
• User-Centric Approach: A deep focus on understanding and designing for the end-user, particularly a non-technical and potentially older demographic.
• Process Building: As a startup, there's an opportunity and expectation to establish and refine processes, rather than adhering to rigid, pre-defined structures.

Company Website: https://www.thecruiseglobe.com/ (Note: The provided URL was for the job portal, a general company website is assumed and linked for context).

📝 Enhancement Note: The company culture is characterized by rapid growth, a strong belief in design's importance, and a lean, collaborative structure. The "Strava for cruises" analogy highlights a focus on data visualization, community, and personal journey tracking within the travel domain.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This role represents a pivotal "Founding" or "Lead" individual contributor position within the Product Design function. It's an opportunity to establish the design practice, set standards, and build foundational systems from the ground up. The scope extends beyond individual feature design to shaping the overall product vision and user experience strategy.

Reporting Structure: Direct reporting line to the CEO. This provides unparalleled visibility into executive-level decision-making and strategic discussions, offering a unique learning opportunity in business strategy alongside design leadership.

Operations Impact: The Senior Product Designer will have a material impact on key business objectives, including user growth, engagement, retention, and ultimately, the company's ability to define and dominate a new market category. Design is positioned as central to these outcomes, not merely an execution function.

Growth Opportunities:

• Design Leadership: Opportunity to grow into a Design Lead or Head of Design role as the company scales, potentially building and managing a design team.
• Product Strategy Influence: Deepen involvement in product strategy, roadmap planning, and business development through direct collaboration with the CEO and leadership team.
• Industry Expertise: Develop specialized knowledge in the rapidly growing cruise travel tech sector, becoming a subject matter expert.
• System Design Mastery: Gain extensive experience in building and scaling complex design systems for a fast-growing consumer product.
• Entrepreneurial Experience: Gain invaluable experience in a high-growth startup environment, learning about all facets of building and scaling a digital business.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role offers significant growth potential, moving from a senior individual contributor to a potential leadership position within a rapidly scaling company. The direct access to the CEO and strategic decision-making processes provides a unique path for professional development beyond core design skills.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Hybrid model with a remote-first approach. The company maintains a physical presence in London, requiring one day per week in the office, fostering a balance between focused remote work and collaborative in-person interaction.

Office Location(s): London, England, United Kingdom. Specific office address details would be provided upon further engagement.

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Hub: The designated office day in London serves as a hub for strategic discussions, team building, and intensive collaborative sessions with cross-functional teams (Product, Data, Engineering, CEO).
• Technology-Rich Environment: Access to modern design tools and technologies, including advanced Figma capabilities and AI prototyping software, is expected.
• Team Interaction: Opportunities for direct, in-person interaction with key stakeholders and team members during office days, promoting strong working relationships and a cohesive team culture.

Work Schedule: While typically based on a full-time schedule (approx. 40 hours/week), the remote-first nature allows for a degree of flexibility. The emphasis is on delivering outcomes and meeting project deadlines, encouraging efficient time management and autonomous work habits.

📝 Enhancement Note: The hybrid model is designed to offer the best of both worlds: the focus and flexibility of remote work, combined with the benefits of in-person collaboration and team cohesion for critical strategic activities.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A review of your resume and portfolio to assess alignment with core requirements, particularly Figma proficiency, UX/UI craft, and startup experience.
• Portfolio Deep Dive & Conversation: A session focused on walking through your portfolio, discussing 2-3 key case studies in detail. Expect questions about your design process, decision-making rationale, user testing methodologies, and how you simplified complex problems. This stage will likely involve the CEO and/or Head of Product.
• Design Challenge/Exercise: Potentially a small, focused design exercise or a more in-depth take-home challenge designed to assess your approach to a specific problem relevant to The Cruise Globe's platform. This may involve rapid prototyping and presenting solutions.
• Cross-Functional Interviews: Meetings with members of the Product, Data, and Engineering teams to assess collaboration style, technical understanding, and cultural fit.
• Final Interview with CEO: A discussion focused on strategic alignment, your vision for design at The Cruise Globe, your understanding of the business, and how you will contribute to shaping the company's future.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Focus on Impact & Process: Clearly articulate the problem, your specific role, the process you followed, the challenges you faced, the solutions you designed, and the outcomes achieved. Quantify impact whenever possible (e.g., "improved conversion by X%," "reduced task completion time by Y%").
• Showcase Figma & Prototyping Mastery: Ensure your Figma work is well-organized, demonstrating components, variants, auto-layout, and interactive prototypes. If AI prototyping tools were used, be ready to discuss their role and benefits.
• Highlight Simplification of Complexity: Select case studies where you tackled complex user flows or information architecture and successfully simplified them into intuitive designs.
• Demonstrate User-Centricity: Detail your user research and testing methods. Explain how user feedback directly shaped your design decisions and led to iterative improvements.
• Tailor to The Cruise Globe: Research The Cruise Globe's product and target audience. Be prepared to discuss how your experience designing for non-technical or older demographics, or for consumer social products, is directly relevant.

Challenge Preparation:

• Understand the User: Revisit the company's target audience (cruisers, potentially older, non-technical) and their likely needs and pain points.
• Embrace Iteration: Be prepared to show how you'd iterate on an initial concept based on feedback or new constraints.
• Focus on Clarity & Simplicity: Ensure any proposed solutions prioritize ease of use and clarity, aligning with the company's stated design goals.
• Consider Business Goals: Think about how your design solutions contribute to user growth, engagement, and retention.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process emphasizes a deep dive into the candidate's practical skills, problem-solving abilities, and strategic thinking, with a strong focus on portfolio demonstration and alignment with the company's specific needs and culture.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Figma: The core design and prototyping tool, expected to be used to an expert level for UI design, component creation, auto-layout, design systems, and interactive prototyping.
• AI Prototyping Tools: Proficiency in tools such as Framer, ProtoPie, Lovable, Uizard, or Figma's integrated AI features for rapid concept testing and validation.
• User Testing Platforms: Experience with tools for conducting remote user interviews and usability tests (e.g., UserTesting.com, Lookback, Maze).

Analytics & Reporting:

• Data Visualization Tools: Familiarity with tools used to understand user behavior and product performance (e.g., Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude), enabling data-informed design decisions.
• Reporting Dashboards: Ability to interpret and leverage data presented in dashboards to identify user pain points and opportunities for design improvement.

CRM & Automation:

• While not a primary design tool, understanding how design integrates with CRM (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot) and marketing automation platforms can be beneficial for context, particularly regarding user onboarding and engagement flows.
• Project Management Tools: Familiarity with tools like Jira, Asana, or Trello for collaborating with engineering and product teams on task management and workflow tracking.

📝 Enhancement Note: The technology stack heavily emphasizes design and prototyping tools, with a specific requirement for Figma expertise and familiarity with emerging AI prototyping capabilities. The inclusion of analytics tools highlights the data-informed approach to design.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Design Excellence: A commitment to high-quality, user-centered design that is both beautiful and functional, becoming the benchmark for the industry.
• Ownership & Accountability: Taking full responsibility for design outcomes, from concept to post-launch iteration, with a bias for action and proactive problem-solving.
• Simplicity & Clarity: A dedication to making complex concepts intuitive and accessible for all users, especially those less familiar with technology.
• Collaboration & Transparency: Working closely and openly with cross-functional teams, valuing input, and fostering a shared understanding of product goals and design decisions.
• Iteration & Learning: Embracing a culture of continuous improvement, where feedback is welcomed, and designs are constantly refined based on data and user insights.

Collaboration Style:

• Partnership-Oriented: Working as a seamless extension of the Product, Data, and Engineering teams, fostering a true partnership approach to product development.
• Direct Communication: Open, honest, and direct communication, especially with leadership (CEO), to ensure clarity on design direction, trade-offs, and progress.
• Feedback-Rich Environment: Encouraging and actively seeking constructive feedback from all team members to elevate the quality and effectiveness of designs.
• Shared Vision: Cultivating a collective understanding and commitment to the product vision and user experience goals.

📝 Enhancement Note: The values emphasize a blend of high design standards, entrepreneurial spirit, and collaborative teamwork, crucial for a startup environment where individual contributions significantly shape the company's trajectory.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Defining a New Category: The primary challenge is helping to define and establish a new digital category for cruise travel, requiring innovative and user-friendly design solutions for a relatively underserved market.
• Designing for a Diverse/Older Demographic: Adapting design patterns and user flows to effectively serve a potentially older and less tech-savvy audience, ensuring accessibility and ease of use without sacrificing modern design principles.
• Balancing Speed and Quality: Operating in a fast-paced startup environment requires rapid iteration while maintaining a high standard of design quality and user experience.
• Establishing Design Systems from Scratch: Building a robust and scalable design system that can support rapid product growth and feature expansion from the ground up.
• Influencing Product Strategy as a Founding Member: Effectively translating design vision into strategic product decisions and influencing the roadmap in a CEO-led environment.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Design Leadership Trajectory: The opportunity to grow into a leadership role, potentially building and managing a design team as the company scales.
• Strategic Business Acumen: Gaining deep insights into business strategy, growth hacking, and startup operations through direct involvement with the CEO and leadership team.
• Specialized Domain Expertise: Developing deep knowledge in the travel tech and cruise industry sectors.
• Advanced Design System Architecture: Mastering the principles and practical application of building scalable design systems for consumer products.
• Entrepreneurial Skillset: Acquiring a comprehensive understanding of building and scaling a tech company from its early stages.

📝 Enhancement Note: The challenges are directly tied to the innovative nature of the company and the specific user base, presenting unique design problems to solve. The growth opportunities are substantial, offering a path beyond individual contribution to leadership and strategic influence.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "How would you approach redesigning the core user journey for booking a cruise, considering our target audience?" (Focus on process, user research, simplification)
• "Describe a time you had to simplify a highly complex product or feature. What was your approach, and what were the results?" (Highlight complexity simplification, user-centricity, iterative design)
• "How do you balance the need for rapid iteration in a startup with maintaining high-quality design standards?" (Discuss trade-offs, agile methodologies, quality obsession)
• "What is your philosophy on creating and scaling design systems, and how would you implement one at The Cruise Globe?" (Focus on scalability, consistency, collaboration with engineering)
• "How would you leverage AI prototyping tools to accelerate your design process and validate concepts for our platform?" (Demonstrate tool proficiency, efficiency, validation strategies)

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What excites you most about The Cruise Globe's mission and the opportunity to define a new category in travel tech?" (Show genuine interest and understanding of the market)
• "How do you approach collaboration with Product Managers, Engineers, and Data Analysts to ensure successful product outcomes?" (Emphasize partnership, communication, shared goals)
• "Describe your experience working in a startup environment. What are the key challenges and rewards for you?" (Highlight adaptability, ownership, comfort with ambiguity)
• "How do you ensure your designs are accessible and intuitive for users who may not be tech-savvy, particularly older demographics?" (Focus on user empathy, inclusive design principles)

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Narrative Arc: Structure each case study with a clear beginning (problem/goal), middle (process, challenges, solutions), and end (outcomes, learnings).
• Visual Storytelling: Use high-quality visuals of your designs, prototypes, and user flows. Annotate key design decisions and the rationale behind them.
• Highlight Your Role: Be explicit about your contributions, especially in a team setting.
• Quantify Impact: Whenever possible, present metrics demonstrating the success of your designs (e.g., user satisfaction scores, engagement rates, task completion times).
• Show, Don't Just Tell: Instead of just describing your process, show the artifacts – wireframes, user flows, prototypes, research synthesis – that demonstrate your expertise.

📝 Enhancement Note: Interview preparation should focus on demonstrating practical application of skills, strategic thinking, and a deep understanding of the company's unique challenges and user base, with the portfolio serving as the primary evidence.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Senior Product Designer position:

• Submit Your Application: Apply through the provided link, ensuring your resume and portfolio are up-to-date and readily accessible.
• Curate Your Portfolio: Select 2-3 of your strongest case studies that best showcase your end-to-end product design process, Figma proficiency, experience with complex problem-solving, and user testing methodologies. Tailor your portfolio to highlight experience relevant to consumer social products and designing for non-technical audiences.
• Optimize Your Resume: Ensure your resume clearly articulates your senior-level experience, highlights key skills such as Figma, prototyping, user testing, and design systems, and quantifies achievements where possible. Use keywords from the job description naturally.
• Prepare Your Narrative: Rehearse your ability to clearly articulate your design process, decision-making rationale, and the impact of your work. Be ready to discuss your portfolio in detail and answer strategic questions about product design and startup environments.
• Research The Cruise Globe: Thoroughly understand the company's mission, product, target audience, and the competitive landscape. Prepare thoughtful questions for the interviewers that demonstrate your engagement and strategic thinking.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.