Director of Product Design

Director of Product Design

As our Director of Product Design, you will be accountable for the speed, depth, and quality of product design execution across the Guardsix platform. This is not a research-led or vision-only role. The primary focus is disciplined, high-velocity design execution with a globally distributed product design team that enables Product and Engineering to ship faster, with less friction, and with enterprise-grade UX quality. Your core mandate is to ensure that UX is consistently ready ahead of engineering, that design output scales with a small team, and that Product Managers and Engineers can execute without ambiguity or rework. You will personally design critical product areas while leading and upgrading an international UX team. This is a hands-on leadership role, reporting directly to the CPO and operating as part of the Product leadership team. You will sit in product reviews, shape execution standards, and step into executive discussions when design clarity materially improves outcomes.

This role is open to remote candidates across EMEA; however, we strongly prefer a Copenhagen, Denmark–based hire to join our HQ. This role is suited for a seasoned product design leader with deep cybersecurity and Security Operations experience, who thrives in complex, admin-heavy products and values execution over debate.

What You Will Be Doing:

Design Execution & Delivery Leadership

• Own end-to-end design execution across the Guardsix platform.
• Ensure wireframes and flows are delivered at least one quarter ahead of development.
• Drive high-throughput, high-quality UX output across complex Security Operations and Managed Security Service Provider workflows.
• Personally design and ship critical product areas where depth and speed matter most.
• Eliminate ambiguity, churn, and rework between Design, Product, and Engineering.

Design Quality & Execution Bar

• Define and enforce a clear, enterprise-grade design quality bar.
• Ensure all designs include: End-to-end workflows, Edge cases and error states, Role-based access, permissions, and operational constraints.
• Run focused design reviews centered on readiness and execution — not theory or prolonged debate.

Team Leadership & Talent Density

• Lead, coach, and performance-manage a team of international product designers.
• Increase design output velocity without adding unnecessary process.
• Upgrade talent over time, including addressing underperformance decisively.
• Build a culture of accountability, clarity, and execution rigor.

Product Partnership

• Partner closely with Product Management, with PM retaining final prioritization ownership.
• Contribute design input into PRFAQs and Working Backwards artifacts where it improves execution.
• Sit in roadmap and product reviews as the design execution authority.
• Present selectively to executives when design clarity accelerates decisions or delivery.

What You Bring to the Table:

• Execution-first design leader. Values shipping over debating.
• Deeply hands-on. Actively designs in Figma and leads by example.
• Strong judgment. Knows when rigor matters and when speed matters more.
• Clear communicator. Resolves friction between PM, UX, and Engineering.
• Pragmatic operator. Builds enough structure to scale without slowing teams down.

Your Skills and Experience:

• 7+ years of experience designing cybersecurity products is a strict requirement, including hands-on work on platforms such as SIEM, NDR, XDR, MDR, SOC, or closely related SecOps tooling.
• 3+ years of direct experience designing for SecOps personas, with demonstrable depth in: Analyst workflows, Investigations and alert triage, Detections, dashboards, and operational tooling (Experience designing only high-level dashboards or reporting is not sufficient.).
• Hands-on experience designing for MSSP or multi-tenant operating models (or equivalent scale/complexity), including role-based access, fleet management, or customer isolation concerns.
• 3+ years of experience leading product designers while remaining meaningfully hands-on, with at least 30–40% of time spent designing in recent roles.
• Expert-level proficiency in Figma (5+ years of daily use), including: Complex, multi-surface flows, Design systems and shared components, Rapid iteration under delivery pressure.
• Demonstrated experience operating in an execution-driven environment, such as: PE-backed or late-stage tech, High delivery cadence with small team, Clear accountability for readiness, quality, and outcomes.
• Proven ability to operate autonomously at Director level, translating loosely defined problems into shippable designs with minimal oversight, and driving clarity across Product and Engineering.

Explicitly Not a Fit If You:

• Are primarily a UX researcher or design theorist.
• Come exclusively from consumer product backgrounds.
• Prefer managing over designing.
• Haven’t personally shipped complex enterprise UX in recent years.
• Rely on heavy process or design theater to demonstrate impact.

Key skills/competency

• Product Design Leadership
• Cybersecurity UX
• Security Operations Design
• Enterprise UX Quality
• Figma Proficiency
• Design System Management
• Product Management Collaboration
• Cross-functional Team Leadership
• High-Velocity Design Execution
• SIEM/NDR/XDR/MDR/SOC Tooling Design