Director of Design

Description

Who We Are

Zencity is transforming how local governments engage with and respond to their communities. Our platform uses AI and NLP to convert resident input into actionable intelligence—empowering data-driven, transparent governance at scale.

Our mission: enable decision-making that is faster, smarter, and more trusted. We're not just building software—we're building the connective tissue between resident voice and government action.

Backed by a bold and innovative product strategy—and recently recognized as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2025—we’re creating the intelligence layer for modern governance.

And we’re just getting started.

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a Head of Product Design to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of product design at Zencity. This is a rare opportunity to shape how our customers experience intelligence—not just in our platform, but across the many moments, mediums, and decisions that define public sector work.

You’ll oversee a growing, distributed design team and collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, and GTM leadership. This role requires a senior design leader with the ability to reimagine and reinvent workflows that live both inside and beyond traditional SaaS interfaces. You’ll be responsible for turning complex civic problems into elegant, intuitive, and high-leverage design systems. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role for a design leader ready to drive a new paradigm in GovTech.

What You’ll Lead

Vision & Strategy

• Define and champion a design vision aligned to our bold product direction and company mission.
• Translate the complexity of government decision-making into elegant and intuitive workflows.
• Inspire and execute a UX approach that is adaptive, systemic, and deeply integrated into our product and org strategy.

Execution & Ownership

• Lead product design for innovative workflows across civic engagement, analytics, AI, and intelligence delivery.
• Operationalize our UX shift: from feature-first to decision-first; from platform surface to embedded delivery.
• Own and evolve Zencity’s design system to ensure scalability, consistency, and excellence across all surfaces.

Leadership & Team Building

• Build and mentor a high-performing team of designers across disciplines and geographies.
• Uplevel design maturity across the org—ensuring design thinking is baked into how we build, decide, and deliver.
• Shape hiring, structure, and growth of the design function.

Collaboration & Influence

• Work in lockstep with PM and engineering leaders to ensure design is a key input into strategic decisions.
• Help bring clarity to ambiguity and advocate for the user in every conversation.
• Be a design voice at the leadership table—driving org-wide thinking around experience, usability, and user success.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience designing and shipping high-impact, user-facing products end-to-end; at least 3 years leading design teams or strategic design functions.
• 
  
• A proven ability to design for and define new workflows—not just web interfaces. You think in systems, user journeys, and decision environments.
• Deep craft in turning complexity into simplicity. You know how to make powerful tools intuitive and usable.
• Strong foundation in both UX and visual design. You can guide execution with precision and taste.
• Experience in AI-powered, data-rich, or multi-persona product environments is a strong advantage.
• You operate at the intersection of vision and delivery—fluent in strategy, but comfortable jumping into Figma when needed.
• A portfolio that demonstrates excellence in design thinking, craft, and measurable impact.

Bonus Points

• Background in GovTech, civic tech, or decision-support products.
• Experience building or evolving multi-product design systems.
• Track record of leading teams in high-growth or transformation environments.
• Passion for solving real-world problems with ethical, inclusive, and thoughtful design.

Why Zencity

• Help build the product that redefines how government decisions are made—with tangible impact on millions of lives.
• Join a team that values speed, clarity, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with a world-class cross-functional team tackling deeply meaningful problems.
• Competitive compensation, stock options, and a hybrid, flexible work environment.