Design Lead

PLEASE KINDLY NOTE: Backgrounds focused primarily on creative direction, brand design, or marketing design are not a match for this role. As Ecosia’s Design Team Lead, you will elevate our design culture, guide our multi-disciplinary design team, and ensure we meet both user and business goals across all our products. You will oversee our horizontal practices, including User Research, Content Design, and Design Systems, and lead a team of 8 designers. Your work will enhance collaboration across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and BI, while defining a compelling design strategy and optimizing ways of working. This position requires both strategic thinking and practical involvement, as you will promote user-centered perspectives at the leadership level, ensure top-quality execution by the team, enhance decision-making processes, expedite delivery, and cultivate an environment supportive of design growth. What You’ll Do Collaborate with C-level to define and align on a clear design vision that supports company-wide goals. Be the voice of the user by bringing forward insights to inform product strategy and guide leadership decision-making. Lead, mentor, and grow a multi-disciplinary team of 8 designers, including a user researcher and a content designer, ensuring their growth and progress. Foster a collaborative environment where design practices flourish through open dialogue and mutual accountability among team members. Enhance cross-functional collaboration with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and BI to ensure seamless workflows and shared outcomes. Scale design operations, optimizing processes, tooling, and ways of working (including AI-assisted workflows). Oversee the evolution and adoption of Ecosia’s design system to ensure consistency and scalability across products. Coordinate hiring and onboarding for design roles, ensuring a diverse, inclusive, and performance-effective team What You Bring 5 years of experience building products in a Senior design role, and at least 2 years of experience leading design teams. Experience in strategic leadership roles, collaborating with executives, and shaping product direction. Committed to user-centered decision-making and translating insights into impactful product and business outcomes. Understanding how to balance vision-setting with operational excellence and team health. Extensive experience leading design ops and scaling ways of working. Process Talent Partner call (⏱️ 30-45')Hiring Manager call (⏱️ 45')Portfolio Review (⏱️ 60')Whiteboarding (⏱️ 1h15') Why Ecosia? What if your job made a real difference in the climate crisis? Join Ecosia and help plant millions of trees where people and ecosystems need them most. We are a diverse team, committed to equality, equity, and inclusion, with members from various backgrounds: sexual orientations, genders, ages, races, ethnicities, nationalities, physical and mental disabilities, family structures, and religions. We offer you the opportunity to balance work with other parts of your life: flexible working hours, 30 vacation days per year (based on a five-day workweek), designated Focus Times, and remote work options. (Note: Not applicable to freelance contracts; different labor laws may apply in other countries.)Our green benefits program - including subsidized public transport cards and bike inspection services - supports your sustainable living choices in Berlin. (Availability may vary by location; not applicable to freelance contracts.)We support your professional growth through learning times, hack days, online and physical libraries, and continuous feedback. (Not applicable to freelance contracts.) Q&A How many people work at Ecosia? 110 (November 2025): our departments include Engineering (incl. Platform and QA), Product (incl. Design), Trees, Operations (incl. Marketing, B2B & BI), and People. Where is Ecosia based, and what kind of work setup do we have? We are a remote-friendly company with one office in Berlin-Wedding. People come to the office or work from home per their wishes and/or circumstances. Some roles require presence in the office at least from time to time. Company language: English. The Talent Partner will tell you more. Compensation Range: €80K - €100K