Product Design Manager, Hospitality

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by 👋

Are you actively looking for a new opportunity? Or just checking the market? Well… you might just be in the right place! 

We're looking for a Product Design Manager Lightspeeds Hospitality team. The ideal candidate is someone who thrives at the intersection of hands-on design and team leadership. In this player-coach role, you'll not only guide our talented POS, Checkout, and Consumer Engagement teams but also actively shape the future of our innovative hospitality product. Imagine empowering restaurants, bars, cafés, and hotels with a cloud-based system that simplifies everything from ordering and payments to inventory and reservations. If you're passionate about making a real impact and fostering design excellence, we want you to help us evolve the tools that keep businesses moving.

The ideal candidate has a proven track record of delivering user-friendly experiences from complex and varied data sources to effectively commercial outcomes. You confidently identify strategic opportunities that create substantial value, excel in collaborative environments, and lead cross-functional initiatives across the hospitality merchant experience.

What you’ll be doing: 

• Problem Solving  
  • Lead high-level product portfolio initiatives through hands-on design and team leadership,  contributing significantly to product strategy and vision.
  • Brings strategic thinking to both execution and problem framing, and can guide the team to solve abstract challenges end-to-end.
  • Understands business objectives to solve highly abstract problems, applying strategic thinking. Shapes the organization to enable teams to solve problems efficiently.
  • Knows how to break big problems into smaller experiments to validate assumptions, driving progress.
  • Proactively explores and integrates AI and emerging technologies to shape new approaches.
  • Translates complex business objectives into clear, actionable solutions—often identifying problems before they surface.
• Driving User-Centricity
  • Works with product teams to develop and use design strategies based on data. Ensures designs meet user needs and support business goals. 
  • Independently drives in-squad UX research to generate actionable insights and influence the product roadmap through data-driven recommendations. Helps create user scenarios and assists in journey mapping and mental model exercises.
  • Advocate for the user while building strong, trusting relationships with cross-functional teams (product, engineering, marketing).
  • Develops and communicates holistic design strategies grounded in both quantitative and qualitative insights. Partners closely with product managers to lead problem definition and ensure user needs remain central throughout the product development process.
• Systems Thinking 
  • Demonstrates masterful understanding of design system principles and the current state of design within the industry. Defines and evolves systems, including typography, color, depth, iconography, illustration, and layout, that works within brand and technical constraints.
  • Understand and implement new design systems, ensuring consistency and efficiency across platforms, and contribute to the systems continual improvement.
  • Leads teams and participates in defining foundational components, evolving the design system, and ensuring it scales with quality and consistency across products.
• Coaching, Management, and Collaboration
  • Hands on player/coach providing mentorship and clear growth paths for each team member while fostering a high-performing, motivated team culture.Oversees project delivery, manages team workload and backlogs, and establishes processes that drive efficiency. Builds strong cross-functional relationships and holds a high bar for quality, accountability, and shared success.
  • An exceptional performer with established trust across teams. Independently leads projects end-to-end and begins to identify new areas of opportunity. Has a scope of influence beyond their own project-level work, with results that benefit the broader team.
  • Collaborate with designers and managers across product teams to elevate consistency and quality while refining team processes.
  • Have strong written and verbal communication skills.
  • When the team needs it, you'll lead by example with hands-on application of your UX/UI skills, crafting high-fidelity prototypes and precise design specifications
• Individual Contributions
  • Responsible for delivering project work with autonomy driving impact where it matters. In this player/coach role, you’re empowered to drive project work independently, making a real impact on our key initiatives.
  • Facilitate collaborative sessions, guiding teams to unlock their best design solutions.
  • Leverage your UX and UI expertise in crafting high-fidelity prototypes and design specifications for hand-off to engineering.
  • Leads end-to-end work with minimal supervision. Manages own backlog independently.

What you need to bring:

• 3+ years of industry experience in a people management role on a Design team, experience in matrix organizations a plus.
• Foundational design-related education (Bachelor of Design, or Visual Arts, or Architecture, or Industrial Design, or Communication)
• An acute self-awareness and deep empathy - for both the customer and your team’s goals. 
• A tenured, evolutionary perspective on technology, product, and design practices
• Experience with service design foundations and a mindset of optimizing  your design process for efficacy.
• An appetite (and the skill) for working across all digital and physical manifestations of what we design.
• A passion for mentoring executives, product managers, and engineers to deliver user-centered solutions.
• Excellent communication and data visualization skills. You can bring internal stakeholders on your design journey and support your decisions with focus and brevity.
• A deep curiosity and ability to consider product strategy and vision. You don’t just care about “how it looks,” or “what we should design,” but “why are we designing this at all?”
• Experience with Agile design sprint methodologies, tools, and processes including the Jira platform
• Experience using prototyping and research methodologies to validate decisions and drive product strategy
• Fluency with product, design, and prototyping tools such as Figma, Google Suite, Miro as well as emerging design-related AI technologies.

We're passionate about enabling people to do their best work. We dream big and we're looking for people who do the same. With us, career milestones happen often and we celebrate every one. Come work with us and find out where your career will take you at Lightspeed! 🚀

What's in it for you?:

• Join a fast-paced, high-growth company.
• Surround yourself with strong talent and enjoy continuous professional growth.
• Develop in a modern and proven technology stack.
• Great benefits and perks, including equity and flexible/hybrid remote work options, in a diverse and inclusive environment.
• Development of very high traffic products, used at the global scale.
• Opportunities to learn and expand your skill set
• Become a valued part of the diverse and inclusive Lightspeed family.

 … and enjoy a range of benefits that’ll keep you happy, healthy and (not) hungry:

• Lightspeed equity scheme (we are all owners)
• Flexible paid time off policy
• Health Insurance
• Health and wellness benefit of $500 per year
• Paid leave and assistance for new parents
• Mental health online platform and counseling & coaching services
• Volunteer day

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