Role: Design Leader (title is flexible)
Company: Ziina
Location: Dubai, UAE (generous relocation support)
Job Type: Full-time, hybrid
About Ziina
Ziina's mission is to bring financial freedom to every person in the Middle East. They’re are building MENA's consumer and SMB financial platform, starting with a peer-to-peer and merchant wallet. The team hail from over 15 nationalities and have backgrounds from Apple, Uber, Stripe, Klarna, Revolut, Yandex, and Nubank. Ziina's payments volumes have grown by 10x YoY over the last two years. They have built a product that is beloved by the UAE with a 4.8 star rating in the app store and is the recipient of 8 international design awards, including the Red Dot Award and the UX Design Award.
Ziina's last round was a $22 million Series A from top-tier investors globally including Altos Ventures, Fintech Collective, Activant, Long Journey Ventures and Y Combinator. Their angel investors include early employees and executives at Revolut, Stripe, Venmo, Brex, Checkout.com, Notion, and Deel.
Ziina is seeking a hands-on Design Leader to build and scale a high-performing team and design function, create user-first experiences, and drive product-led growth. This role will shape the company's design direction and ensure every interaction reflects Ziina's mission to make money management simple, intuitive, and beautiful for millions in the Middle East.
What You’ll Be Responsible For
- Leading and scaling the design team: Hire, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of product and brand designers.
- Building culture: Foster a culture of creativity, innovation, collaboration, superb taste, and excellence within the design team and across the organization.
- Being a hands-on design leader: Contribute directly to product design while owning strategic design direction.
- Establishing design systems & processes: Build scalable design ops, ensure consistency, and improve speed of execution.
- Driving product-led growth: Apply behavioral psychology and UX best practices to create seamless, user-first experiences.
- Championing user insights: Integrate research and feedback loops into the product lifecycle.
- Improving product velocity & quality: Reduce design debt, review and provide feedback on design deliverables, accelerate release cycles, and enhance user satisfaction with measurable results.
- Collaborating cross-functionally: Work closely with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Compliance to ensure cohesive delivery.
- Levelling up consistently: Stay up-to-date with design best practices across UX, AI, and automation, and apply them to enhance the company's design capabilities and scalability.
- Representing design at the leadership level: Report directly to the CEO, influencing product vision and strategy.
What You’ll Need to Succeed