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

Description

We are Edenspiekermann, an independent design consultancy with 40+ years of experience helping world-leading organizations invent, build, and evolve their products. We are looking for a hands-on Design Director to join our US team in a permanent, remote-first role based in Southern California. You will work primarily from home and be available to travel to client sites across the United States as engagements require. You will lead complex digital-product and design-system engagements across our portfolio, including work in regulated industries and global medical technology. AI will be a core part of how you explore, prototype, make decisions, and help teams deliver better work. This is a senior client-facing role for someone who is excited by how AI is changing design and product development. You will set direction, stay close to the work, and help clients move from isolated experiments to useful AI-enabled products, workflows, and operating models. You will combine curiosity and speed with strong judgment about where human craft, review, and accountability matter.

Your Tasks

• 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.

Your profile

• 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.

We Offer

• A permanent, full-time, remote-first role with a central place in our US design team.
• The annual salary range for this position is $120,000 to $150,000, depending on experience and qualifications.
• A defined contribution toward medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus access to a healthcare FSA.
• A 401(k) plan with a 2% company match and eligibility for a discretionary year-end bonus based on company performance.
• A flexible PTO policy, with time off coordinated around client and team commitments, plus eleven paid holidays, a year-end office closure, monthly internet and wellness stipends, and professional-development support.
• The opportunity to lead visible, strategically important product, design-system, and AI-enabled transformation engagements.
• An international portfolio and regular collaboration with colleagues across Europe and the United States.
• A high-craft, low-ego team with direct access to partners and senior leadership, real autonomy, constructive feedback, and space to shape how we work.
• A multidisciplinary team that is actively building AI into design, strategy, research, engineering, and delivery.

We are pleased to meet you!

We value diversity and welcome applications regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic or social origin, religion or belief, disability, age, sexual orientation, or identity.
If you are interested, please provide us with the following documents and information:

• Current CV
• Portfolio with at least one substantial product or design-system case and a credible AI-enabled product or workflow example
• A short explanation of your role, decisions, measurable contribution, and how AI changed the work or outcome
• Earliest possible start date

About us

Who we are 
As an ambitious design consultancy we collaborate with our clients and see our work together as a partnership. We aim for high quality standards while staying humble. We are unconventional. Sometimes a detour is the fastest way to the goal. We are constantly striving to improve. We leave our comfort zones and grow together as a team and individuals because we support each other. And also we have a lot of fun together and give everyone the chance to contribute to our vibrant team culture. Everyone’s input is valid and appreciated.

How we work
Our interaction designers work in agile and interdisciplinary teams on websites and platforms for major brands as well as for startups. Our teams combine conceptual thinking, a sophisticated understanding of design and a deep knowledge of web and app development to develop a digital product or service with a user-centric approach. In doing so, we advise and coach our clients' teams to provide the best customer experience for their customers.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
One more thing, never fear to apply initiative. We understand: a lack of confidence can sometimes keep us from applying for a job. But guess what?! 
There is no such thing as the perfect applicant. That's why we encourage you to apply to us.