Associate Director, Product Design

Associate Director, Product Design

At Parallel, we partner with companies who care about building great products, and we help them ship work that improves lives and moves markets. As an Associate Director, you'll shape the quality of everything we make and grow the people who make it. You'll lead with vision, balancing hands-on execution with mentorship so teams deliver outstanding, high-impact design. You'll work closely with our clients, driving real business and user value while setting a clear standard for design excellence.

You do your best work in ambiguity, you bring strategic thinking to messy problems, and you raise the bar through deep expertise in product design, brand, and storytelling. As a leader, you'll champion high-quality, user-centred design and keep Parallel at the front of digital craft.

What You'll Do

Lead by doing

• Balance leadership with hands-on design, working alongside teams to create and ship exceptional work.

• Bring deep expertise in product design, design systems, product strategy, and human-centred design to guide and sharpen the work.

• Actively raise the bar, giving clear, specific, actionable feedback to project teams.

Client engagement and delivery

• Be the trusted design advisor to clients: guide them through the process, present the work, manage feedback, and build strong relationships grounded in Parallel's point of view.

• Drive project success by applying service design and change-management thinking.

• Partner with the business team to scope work well and spot the right opportunities to grow an account.

Advocacy and leadership at Parallel

• Build a collaborative, inclusive, high-performance design culture.

• Partner with Parallel's leadership to keep the team engaged and the culture strong.

• Hire, mentor, and develop designers, building a real pipeline of leaders on the team.

• Represent Parallel in the design community, attracting great talent and new work.

What We're Looking For

Technical expertise

• Product / UX design: You set the quality bar, push teams toward better thinking, and drive best practice across research, strategy, and execution.

• Visual design: You champion excellent visual craft and stay current on trends, tools, and emerging tech.

• Product strategy: You keep design aligned with the product roadmap, release plans, and market positioning.

• Critique and collaboration: You build a culture of constructive critique, inside the team and with clients.

• Research: You use qualitative and quantitative signals to inform and validate design decisions.

• Content design: You advocate for clear, compelling communication that fits the brand and the experience.

Leadership and influence

• Selling design: You build narratives that help clients understand and buy into the decisions.

• Vision: You lead teams to shape experience concepts that balance business goals, user needs, and genuine innovation.

• Creative direction: You hold the strategic and creative quality of every project, through execution and client presentation.

• Systems design: You define scalable design systems built for usability, adoption, and the long haul.

• Brand strategy: You confidently lead brand and strategy sessions, guiding clients toward strong creative directions.

Requirements

• 10+ years in product or UX design, with proven time managing and mentoring design teams through complex work at a high bar.

• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to align and influence a room of different stakeholders.

• Experience working cross-functionally to drive business priorities and deliver real value.

• A portfolio of shipped products that shows both craft and strategic thinking.

• Everyday fluency with modern design tools and AI in your practice.

• Working knowledge of change management and service design.

• Active engagement in the design community through writing, talks, or panels.

• A commitment to inclusive design and a collaborative team environment.

How We Hire

The bar is high and the role is senior, so we take the process seriously and move quickly. Expect a couple of conversations with the team, then a small, paid real-world project so we can see how you actually think and work. The role is remote. Compensation matches the seniority we're hiring for.