Design Director

Noli is a Beauty Tech startup backed by L'Oréal Group, founded in 2024 to solve one of the biggest pain points in the beauty industry: helping users find the right beauty products for their needs. Based in London (Holborn), we're on an exciting growth journey in the online beauty space. At Noli, our vibrant culture drives everything we do - we're ambitious, curious, and deeply committed to empowering our team and our users. We put people first, embrace innovation, and foster a creative, inclusive environment where everyone thrives.

The role:

As Product Design Director at Noli, you'll keep the venture on the cutting-edge of design with a focus on data-driven iteration, rapid prototyping and scaling our design system. Creating a seamless yet delightful experience that not only helps people find the best product for their skin, but helps them learn something about themselves in the process. You'll empathise deeply with the needs of our users, translating research learnings into design principles that help achieve our ambitious business goals and objectives. Leading with strong creative vision, human-centred thinking and high standards for execution, together with an effortless ability to connect and collaborate across teams - from engineering to growth and marketing. By nature, you'll be relentlessly curious, someone who challenges the norm, pushes boundaries and thrives in a fast-paced environment. In this role you will be the driving force behind our product, operating across multiple product pods, keeping your eyes on the big picture and your hands on the craft of the details.

Key responsibilities

Leadership

• Deliver product vision: Collaborate with product, tech and venture leadership to create quarterly roadmaps that are ambitious and aligned to venture strategy.
• Deliver cross-venture creative cohesion: Oversee all on-site asset creation and creative execution from product to marketing and brand, ensuring flawless execution and end-to-end experience.
• Foster design excellence: Deliver differentiated user experiences and effective design solutions that generate business results against venture KPIs.
• Lean mindset: Use innovative methods ('most valuable tests') to prove key design hypotheses before committing into long-term roadmap.
• Team mentorship: Run 1-1 coaching and side-by-side sessions to help grow, teach, mentor and manage a high-performing design team.
• Manage design operations: Oversee the allocation of design resources across pods, ensuring optimal alignment of skills to meet roadmap milestones.

Product direction

• Design oversight: Give cross-pod direction on the development of wireframes, prototypes and high-fidelity designs to ensure intuitive UX and cohesive/accessible UI.
• Data-driven development: Use product analytics to ensure new designs and decisions are aligned with priority business goals and real-time user needs/behaviour.
• Rapid prototyping: Guide team with best practices in agile product development to test and validate ideas quickly (fail-fast mindset).
• Platform expansion: Collaborate with Product leads to evolve our experience and design system as we expand into new beauty categories, launch in new geographies and target new audiences.
• Big picture thinking: Drive conceptual design initiatives, encouraging team to explore bold, visionary ideas and test innovative solutions to solve user pain points.
• Maintain Design System: Manage our design kit, component library and final designs. Keep up-to-date and evolve in-line with industry best practice.
• Work smart: Create plans that connect product workstreams to avoid duplication of work or efforts by designers on different pods.

Brand

• Live our mission: Be a vocal and visible ambassador of our brand purpose - to solve the biggest pain point in beauty... 'finding the best product for me'.
• Brand guardianship: Look across entire venture to keep all creative output strictly aligned to our brand guidelines and high executional standards.
• Asset approval: Provide feedback and sign-off for on-site content, promotion activations and merchandising assets.

Collaboration

• Partner with Product leaders: Close collaboration with HoP and PMs; Input into sprint plans, support with decision making and inspire with fresh creative thinking.
• Cross-pod creativity: Connect with engineering, marketing and research to foster a culture of design thinking, experimentation and continuous improvement.
• Open communication: Proactively organise async updates and alignment meetings to keep design in perfect harmony with all pods.
• Creative challenger: Give constructive feedback and creative provocation that raises our quality bar, spurs innovation and leads to differentiated solutions.

Innovation

• Show don't tell: Put pen to paper yourself and regularly bring ideas for new features and experiences to the leadership table.
• Relentlessly curious: Stay ahead on cutting-edge design trends, tech / AI tools, connected experiences and human-centred methodologies.
• Share inspiration: Act as a thought leader and be a source of inspiration, celebrating the latest and greatest from the design, tech and beauty industry.

Requirements

Experience:

• Minimum 5-10 years' experience as a lead product designer or design director.
• Proven track record launching digital products/UX strategies that have achieved measurable success (ideally with experience in beauty, fashion or tech startups).
• Deep understanding of user-centred design principles and the ability to apply them to complex commercial problems.
• Strong aesthetic sensibility with the ability to seamlessly merge technology and beauty.
• Portfolio showcasing user-centric and innovative product designs.

Technical skills:

• Proficiency in leading design tools (Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Jira, Notion, Miro etc.).
• Understanding of front-end development principles to enhance collaboration with engineering teams.
• Fluent in analytics and able to define narratives and insights from the data.
• Demonstrate wide range of senior design skillset, from high-level design thinking to hands-on design craft.

Soft skills:

• Extensive experience managing individual team members, including performance management processes.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Ways of working:

• Commits to 3+ office days a week in London office and enjoys working within 2-week sprints cadence.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced and highly collaborative environment.

Education & Extra:

• Degree or similar recognised qualification in Product Design or a related field.
• Passion for beauty, technology and creating transformative user experiences.
• Bonus, experience overseeing design for B2C products over the scaling phase (post-MVP).

About our Noli culture:

At Noli, our vibrant culture is the heart of everything we do. We believe in creating an environment where innovation, curiosity, and empowerment thrive. Our values define us and shape the way we work together to transform the beauty industry.

• Founded for the People: We put our users at the centre of everything. We constantly learn from them, challenge biases, and adapt our products to meet their unique needs.
• Boundlessly Ambitious: We believe in limitless potential. Our team sets high expectations and pushes boundaries to achieve great things.
• Relentlessly Curious: The beauty industry is always evolving, and so are we. We embrace new technologies and stay connected to the latest trends to keep us ahead of the curve.
• Positively Glowing: We're passionate about inspiring each other and bringing light to the beauty world. Our energy is contagious, and it fuels our creativity.
• Empowered: We empower doers with radical ownership. We eliminate stagnation and encourage innovation by giving our team the freedom to experiment and create.
• Unique & United: We celebrate diversity in all its forms. We value different perspectives, foster mutual care, and strive to be better, together.

Join us at Noli and help us redefine the beauty experience!