Orbital - Head of Design
Requirements
• The must-haves • A track record of sitting at the product leadership table and influencing business decisions, not just delivering a design agenda within one. • A track record of sitting at the product leadership table • Experience scaling a design function through a high-growth phase, with the judgment to know what process and structure matters at each stage and what slows you down. • Experience scaling a design function through a high-growth phase, • You have designed AI-native products. Not tools with AI bolted on. You have worked through the real problems: explainability, trust, agentic UX, confidence signals. You have opinions formed from real experience. • You have designed for expert professional users, people who know their domain better than any designer ever will, and you understand how to design for that dynamic without condescending or oversimplifying. • You have designed for expert professional users, • Strong commercial instincts. You understand how product design affects adoption, retention, and revenue, and you can connect design decisions to business outcomes. • Strong commercial instincts. • The ability to translate product context into a design strategy and challenge existing priorities when the evidence demands it. • The ability to translate product context into a design strategy • Experience leading through a design team, setting direction and standards without owning every deliverable. • Experience leading through a design team, • And a few nice-to-haves • Direct experience of a Series B to Series C growth journey. • Built a design function from an early-stage base rather than inherited one. • Familiarity with legal tech, fintech, compliance tech or another domain where precision and professional accountability shape every design decision. • Experience building or significantly evolving a design system that improved team velocity at scale.
Responsibilities
• Lead from the product. • Your first team is the product engineering leadership team. You will be part of product, commercial, and strategic conversations, bringing a strategic design perspective to business challenges rather than representing the design function in isolation. From there, you will form your own view on where the product experience is constraining growth, where the interface is creating friction for users, and what needs to change. You will help the leadership team pressure-test product decisions against user reality, spot where information architecture, interaction patterns, or visual clarity are becoming bottlenecks, and ensure that how we design is aligned with where the business is heading. • Set the design agenda from product context. • You will not be given a predefined project list. You will assess what you learn from the product, the users, and the business and set the design priorities from there. That means making sure areas like information architecture, interaction design, design systems, user research, and AI interface patterns are pointed at the right problems and prioritised accordingly. A major part of the brief is translating current product realities into a sharper design mandate and challenging existing assumptions when the evidence demands it. • Define what AI-native design looks like here. • The hardest design problems at Orbital are not aesthetic. They are epistemic. How do you help a real estate lawyer trust an AI output enough to put their name to it? How do you present the reasoning behind a 50-document analysis in a way that a partner can review in 20 minutes? How do you make agentic behaviour feel controllable to a professional who is accountable for the outcome? You will set the standard for how Orbital answers those questions, shape the interaction patterns that distinguish our product from everything else in the market, and hold the wider team accountable for the quality of the experience we ship. • Build the design function. • You will be the consistent presence the design team anchors around. You will invest in their growth, develop clear ownership within the function, and be accountable for the team's development over time, not just its immediate output. Over time you will shape a high-leverage design function that combines strong craft, deep user understanding, and a genuine instinct for where AI changes the rules.
Benefits
• You will join a company at a genuine inflection point, with real influence at the product engineering leadership table from day one. • You will shape the design function rather than inherit one, with room to build it around craft, research, and AI-first thinking. • The design problems here are some of the most interesting and challenging in the market. • You will be part of a collaborative, highly ambitious team where the standard is high and the ownership is real. • 🧑 💻 We believe in flexibility, but we're also big on in-person collaboration. This role is based in our London office with an expectation of multiple days in the office per week. It's about being present when it matters, and balancing autonomy with commitment. • This role is based in our London office with an expectation of multiple days in the office per week • 🏢 Equity options in a fast-growing startup • 🌴 25 days holiday plus bank holidays • 📚 Personal development budget and learning opportunities • 🍔 Free lunch on Wednesdays and Deliveroo budget for late nights • 🚲 Cycle-to-work scheme • 📚 A bias toward experimentation, rapid learning, and iterating quickly based on real feedback • We're in the process of building an inclusive, welcoming culture where everyone feels seen and valued. Expect regular team off-sites, shared lunches, and social events, with something for everyone. • 🔒 Security is everyone’s responsibility at Orbital. We ask all team members to follow our security policies, complete regular awareness training, and handle sensitive data with care in line with ISO 27001 standards. Spot something unusual? Reporting risks or incidents quickly helps us maintain the strong culture of security and compliance we all depend on. • Security is everyone’s responsibility at Orbital. • 💡 At Orbital, we’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We especially welcome applications from people who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, or if the right role isn’t listed yet, we’d still love to hear from you. • At Orbital, we’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. • 💰 This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting. Pay is based on several factors, which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and business requirements. • 💰 This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting • Everyone who works with Orbital goes through background screening before they start. It's part of how we keep Orbital secure, for the people who work here and for the client information we're trusted with.
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