This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Lead Product Designer, Marketplace based in Kenya.
As Lead Product Designer, you will own the end-to-end design direction for a high-impact discovery marketplace connecting creators with audiences seeking meaningful experiences. You’ll tackle a complex two-sided marketplace where creator visibility and consumer trust must work together. The role places AI at the center of the discovery experience, creating new challenges around personalization, intent, recommendations, and trust. You’ll work closely with a founder-led product team and experienced engineers to turn ambitious ideas into polished, shipped experiences. You’ll have significant autonomy to identify opportunities, frame problems, prototype rapidly, and shape product strategy. This is an opportunity to influence a critical product area while raising the design bar across a talented, globally distributed team.
Accountabilities
- Own marketplace discovery end-to-end, from identifying opportunities and framing problems to defining design direction, prototyping, and shipping high-quality experiences.
- Shape the design strategy for a two-sided marketplace, balancing creator needs for visibility, growth, and trust with consumer needs for relevance, confidence, and meaningful experiences.
- Design AI-driven discovery experiences, including conversational interfaces, curation journeys, personalization, recommendation experiences, and trust signals that make discovery feel intuitive and human.
- Connect product systems and experiences, understanding how community, creator, content, engagement, and marketplace dynamics influence what users discover and how they make decisions.
- Prototype rapidly and iteratively, using AI-assisted development and prototyping tools to explore concepts, validate ideas, and bridge the gap between design concepts and production-ready experiences.
- Collaborate closely with product and engineering, contributing to product direction, making informed trade-offs, and ensuring designs are feasible, scalable, and aligned with business and user goals.
- Drive design quality and consistency, applying strong interaction, visual, and systems thinking across the marketplace experience.
- Mentor and support other designers, raising the quality of design thinking and execution while contributing through influence rather than formal people management.
- Operate effectively in ambiguity, building conviction through experimentation, iteration, feedback, and evidence rather than waiting for complete requirements.
- Communicate proactively, sharing design thinking, surfacing decisions early, articulating trade-offs, and keeping distributed teams aligned.
Requirements
- 5+ years of product design experience, with a strong portfolio demonstrating shipped products, complex multi-user experiences, and meaningful contributions to product direction.
- Proven marketplace or two-sided platform experience is required, with demonstrated understanding of the dynamics between supply-side participants and consumers.
- Experience owning a product area at a senior or lead level, including setting design direction, making strategic trade-offs, and driving outcomes with significant autonomy.
- Strong experience with 0→1 product development, taking ambiguous opportunities from early exploration through launch and iteration.
- Demonstrated understanding of marketplace discovery, including search, ranking, recommendations, engagement, trust, visibility, and conversion dynamics.
- Genuine fluency with AI-assisted prototyping and development, using tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, v0, Lovable, or comparable technologies to rapidly explore and test ideas.
- Advanced Figma proficiency, with the ability to create high-fidelity designs, prototypes, and systems that support effective cross-functional collaboration.
- Strong product and systems thinking, with the ability to connect individual experiences to broader platform dynamics and business outcomes.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to clearly explain design rationale, challenge assumptions constructively, and build alignment across product, engineering, and design.
- Comfort working in ambiguity, with a bias toward experimentation, iteration, and learning rather than waiting for perfect specifications.
- Highly proactive and autonomous working style, particularly suited to a remote, asynchronous environment where ownership and clear communication are essential.
- Professional fluency in English, with strong spoken, written, and reading proficiency equivalent to approximately CEFR C2 / ILR 5.
- Strong alignment with collaborative, inclusive, high-ownership working principles, with a focus on outcomes, craft, and continuous improvement.
Benefits
- USD $140,000–$170,000 annual compensation, with the opportunity to be considered at either Lead or Senior level depending on experience and role alignment.
- Globally competitive, U.S.-benchmarked compensation, designed to reflect the scope and experience of the successful candidate.
- Equity participation, including ongoing refresh grants.
- 35 days of paid time off each year.
- Fully remote working environment, providing flexibility and autonomy across locations and time zones.
- Twice-yearly company retreats, bringing the global team together in destinations around the world.
- Benefits supporting health, wellbeing, and professional development.
- High-autonomy culture, with an emphasis on ownership, trust, and meaningful outcomes rather than hours worked.
- Global and diverse team environment, collaborating with talented professionals across 30+ countries.
- Significant opportunity for professional growth, with the ability to shape an important marketplace product area and influence product direction.
How Jobgether works:
We use an AI-powered matching process to ensure your application is reviewed quickly, objectively, and fairly against the role's core requirements. Our system identifies the top-fitting candidates, and this shortlist is then shared directly with the hiring company. The final decision and next steps (interviews, assessments) are managed by their internal team.
We appreciate your interest and wish you the best!
Data Privacy Notice: By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Jobgether will process your personal data to evaluate your candidacy and share relevant information with the hiring employer. This processing is based on legitimate interest and pre-contractual measures under applicable data protection laws (including GDPR). You may exercise your rights (access, rectification, erasure, objection) at any time.
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