Intermediate Product Designer

INTERMEDIATE PRODUCT DESIGNER

REPORTS TO: DESIGN LEAD 

**Must be based in Johannesburg (On-site or Hybrid)

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

- Consult with clients independently - ask the right questions for unclear briefs, surface assumptions, and align with stakeholders without needing direction
- Lead design end-to-end across discovery, definition, ideation, prototyping, testing, and delivery within agile sprint cycles
- Facilitate working sessions, design reviews, and client presentations with professionalism and confidence
- Translate complex regulatory, compliance, and domain constraints into clear, usable product experiences
- Collaborate daily with product managers, engineers, QA, etc. - contributing meaningfully to backlog refinement and sprint planning
- Champion the user: Conduct and synthesise research, usability tests, and analytics to ground design decisions in evidence
- Produce high-fidelity prototypes, interaction specs, and developer-ready deliverables that reduce engineering ambiguity
- Maintain and contribute to design systems, pattern libraries, and documentation
- Manage your own time and deliverables across concurrent work streams without supervision
- Informally mentor junior designers and model strong design craft and process standards

SKILLS & COMPETENCIES

Design Craft:

- Mastery of Figma (Components, variables, auto-layout, prototyping, Figma Makes)
- Strong visual design sensibility: Typography, colour, spacing, hierarchy, accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA compliance embedded in workflow, not bolted on)

Product Thinking:

- User-centred mindset with comfort across qualitative and quantitative research methods
- Ability to clearly define and articulate problems before jumping to solutions
- Experience mapping user flows, etc.
- Data-literate: Can interpret analytics, define success metrics, and use data to prioritise decisions
- Understanding of how design decisions affect business and technical constraints

Communication & Client Skills:

- Excellent written and verbal communication - adapts tone for technical teams, executives, and end-users
- Confident facilitator across workshops, sprint ceremonies, client showcases, and design crits
- Active listener who asks precise, well-timed questions to clarify intent
- Comfortable challenging assumptions and pushing back constructively on bad briefs or scope creep
- Diplomatic but direct - can navigate differing opinions and land on decisions that move work forward

Agile & Delivery:

- Experienced working embedded in cross-functional agile squads
- Understands the sprint lifecycle and how to deliver design at the right fidelity for each stage
- Comfortable with ambiguity - can progress work with incomplete information and course-correct efficiently
- Proactively flags risks, dependencies, and blockers rather than waiting for them to escalate

EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS

- 4–7 years of professional product design experience (agency or in-house)
- Demonstrable experience in at least one of: Fintech, banking, insurance, payments - and/or medtech, health-tech, clinical platforms
- Portfolio showing end-to-end case studies with clear problem framing, process, and measurable outcomes
- Track record of working directly with clients or senior business stakeholders
- Experience designing for mobile (iOS/Android) and web; responsive design principles second nature
- Exposure to design system creation, governance, or significant contribution
- Familiarity with research tooling: Maze, Lyssna, Google Analytics, etc