Lead Product Designer

Our Purpose 

At Xero, we're here to help supercharge small businesses. We do this by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights and connecting businesses with the right data, advisors and apps. When that happens, we're not only making life better for small business, we'll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

About the team

The Collecting Payments Design Team focuses on creating innovative payment solutions for small businesses. Our key objective is to design experiences for invoicing and other payment methods, and integrating payment providers to offer a comprehensive payments solution.

About the role

Lead Product Designers help define, design and deliver seamless product experiences within a product area at Xero. Working on your own design tasks, as well as assisting others through design collaboration, feedback and mentorship. You'll contribute to the design vision and direction, working with the Design team and key relationships with Product leaders within your product area. You'll help define how we improve as a Design team by working closely with other Leads and Principals, as well as our Design Leadership Team.

You're not required to manage anyone as a Lead, but you will mentor others and lead by example, offering design critique, sharing your thoughts and domain knowledge, and helping others develop their skills and expertise. This could be anything from helping deliver the team's professional development programme to hosting knowledge sharing sessions or even creating better processes that can be implemented across the wider team. 

Leads also work closely with their Design Directors, building strong relationships with engineering leads and product managers to help influence prioritisation of work and roadmap items.

• Design Practice and Thinking: collaborate with design leadership to shape the Product Design vision and ensure top-notch execution within your product area. You'll champion the value of design, dive into research and analysis, help define the problems we're solving, and create design frameworks (think wireframes, visual layouts, etc.). You'll explore innovative interaction solutions, develop phased design approaches, build prototypes, and work closely with other designers. Designing for accessibility and creating detailed interactions and interfaces will also be key. 
• Design Research and Testing: we're looking for someone to help identify research opportunities and participate in planning and conducting research and testing. You'll be involved in user research to understand customer needs, synthesize data, and contribute to user testing.
• Relationship Management: you'll influence, challenge, and support other designers to deliver fantastic product experiences. You'll contribute to strategic product initiatives, facilitate team workshops, and collaborate across teams to balance user needs, business goals, and technical possibilities. Working closely with development teams during sprints to ensure design quality and solve issues is also part of the role.

• Experience designing products with a focus on complex workflows
• Experience building and iterating on a product or experiences based on usage patterns, user feedback and an evolving strategic landscape 
• A portfolio that demonstrates high-quality design outcomes, contributing to user experience and business value 
• Experience across the entire design process, with mastery in executing elegant interfaces
• Strong preference for payments experience

Why Xero? 

Offering very generous paid leave to use however you'd like (plus statutory holidays), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family. Health insurance, life insurance, and income protection.

We offer wellbeing and sports programmes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, career development, and many other benefits that reflect our human value.

You'll do the best work of your life at Xero