• The team. Manage, coach, and grow product designers across the organization. You're accountable for their performance, their development, and the quality of what ships. A dozen-plus designers, each with their own bar, different ways of working, and real opinions. You'll need to earn their trust before you can raise the standard, and do both at once.

• The vision. Partner with Product, Engineering, Business and Data leadership to define what great design means at Ovoko - then translate that into team-level priorities, craft standards, and a design system that makes the whole product feel coherent. 

• The craft bar. You can walk through our product and feel immediately what's wrong, and know what it would take to fix it. You review output, lead critiques, and are the person who notices when something isn't good enough and says so clearly.

• The business orientation. Great design at Ovoko is measured by whether it works. Our sellers and buyers are scattered across Europe, each with different needs and expectations. The work that matters here reduces friction, builds trust between strangers, and makes a chaotic industry feel manageable. You find that genuinely interesting - and you connect every design decision to the numbers that back it up.

• The organization structure. Decide what the design organisation looks like at our stage. Make real calls on roles, headcount, and reporting lines. Own it day to day and evolve it as we grow.

• The operational rhythm. Define what excellence looks like at every stage - discovery, research, handoff, post-launch. Put the rituals and reviews in place to get there, without slowing the team down.

• The AI shift. Set the team's point of view on how AI changes both the products we build and the way designers work. Help every designer level up alongside it.

Someone who has built and led design teams in a similar environment. Whether your title was Director of Design, Head of Design, Design Lead, or something similar matters less than the scope of your experience and the impact you've had.

You'll likely be a great fit if you have:

• Experience leading design teams. You've built, coached, and developed designers, created high-performing teams, and helped establish a strong design culture.

• Stakeholder fluency. You can read business strategy deeply enough to build the design playbook top-down, and align Product Directors, Engineering leaders, and the exec team behind it.

• Hands-on craft. Still close enough to the work to set the standard, lead design reviews, and know immediately when something isn't right.

• Business mindset. You think in outcomes, metrics, and trade-offs - not features. Every design decision connects to something measurable.

• Experience shaping a design organization. You've introduced standards, improved processes, and helped teams scale while keeping quality high.

• Experience working on complex digital products. Marketplace, e-commerce, or SaaS experience would be a strong advantage, but we're equally interested in leaders who've tackled similarly complex product ecosystems.

• A portfolio demonstrating strategic impact, complex problem solving, and the quality bar you've set for teams you've led.