Head of Product Design

**About BlaBlaCar**

BlaBlaCar is the world’s leading community-based travel app enabling 27 million members a year to carpool or travel by bus in 21 countries. Our team of 800 employees counts over 50 nationalities and is spread across our 5 global offices, 30% working fully remotely.

Your mission

As the Head of Product Design at BlaBlaCar, you will play a crucial role in enhancing our product design and user experience across all our platforms. BlaBlaCar is evolving from a single carpooling product to a leading online travel agency (OTA) for ground transport, encompassing carpool, bus, and train services across our markets.

You will lead this exciting transition within our product experience, overseeing a talented team of product designers. Your mission is to define the design strategy, significantly enhance our user experience, and ensure the delivery of stunning, high-performing products.

You will report directly to the CPO, championing design excellence and fostering a culture of innovation to deliver seamless and inspiring shared travel experiences for our +120 million members across 21 countries. Your leadership will directly shape the future of our product, making travel accessible everywhere to anyone

**Your responsibilities**:
- ** Design Excellence & Craft**: Drive the creation of exceptional and intuitive user experiences through effective UX and UI design. Oversee the entire design process from concept to delivery, ensuring high-quality and consistent design standards across our product. You will own PIXAR, our design system, to ensure product consistency, scalability for future initiatives, and responsiveness to user feedback and emerging design trends.
- ** Team Leadership & Mentorship**: Lead, inspire, and mentor our team of product designers, fostering a collaborative and innovative working environment. Provide guidance on design methodologies and best practices, ensuring the team's continuous professional development and growth.
- ** Hands-on Design Contribution**: While leading, you will maintain a hands-on approach, actively contributing to key design challenges and setting a high bar for craft within the team.
- ** Strategic Design Leadership**: Define and articulate a compelling design vision aligned with BlaBlaCar's overall product and business strategy.
- ** Cross-Functional Collaboration**: Collaborate closely with Product Management, Product Marketing, Engineering, and Growth to support the overall strategy through impactful design solutions. Foster a culture of open communication and collaboration between design and other departments.
- ** User Experience Advocacy**: Be the voice of the user within the company, advocating for the value of design in achieving business goals and ensuring design solutions are aligned with strategic objectives.

**Your qualifications**:
- Proven experience (10+ years) in a leadership role within product design, preferably in the online travel, e-commerce, or marketplace industry.
- A strong portfolio demonstrating successful design solutions and strategy implementation.
- Beyond just principles, you possess strong expertise in UX/UI design, research methodologies and a dedication to the craft. You'll need to roll up your sleeves and get hands-on, directly contributing to and producing design work, even while leading. A deep understanding of design systems (like PIXAR) and their implementation for product consistency and scalability is also essential.
- Excellent leadership and team management skills, with a track record of building, inspiring, and mentoring product design teams.
- Ability to define design strategy and translate complex business goals and user needs into compelling design solutions.
- Effective communication and collaboration skills, with experience working with cross-functional teams in an agile development environment. Proven ability to integrate feedback constructively in a fast-paced environment.
- Solid understanding of how design translates into development, ensuring feasibility and efficient implementation.
- Full working proficiency in English.
- Alignment with our BlaBlaPrinciples
- BlaBlaCar is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees._