Head of Design

We’re on a mission to make real estate transactions smarter, faster, and friction‑free. Real estate is the world’s largest asset class, yet the legal processes and tools behind it remain slow, manual, and underinvested. Lawyers must review dense documents line by line and piece together information across silos, all while clients demand faster, more transparent due diligence. That’s where we come in. Orbital Copilot is the AI assistant built exclusively for commercial real estate law. Developed with former practicing real estate lawyers, it accelerates complex due diligence by up to 70% while delivering legal‑grade precision. We’ve just raised a $60m Series B to accelerate our UK/US expansion. We’re trusted by leading firms like Goodwin and BCLP to remove the busywork so legal teams can focus on what they do best: applying sharp legal judgment, delivering standout client service, and getting deals over the line faster. Working at Orbital means joining a team that’s reimagining how real estate transactions get done – moving fast, working collaboratively, and giving people the ownership to make a real impact from day one.

The role involves reporting directly to the CTO and working alongside engineering, product, legal engineering, and AI from the start. Your direct team is small today, consisting of three designers, and you will shape how it grows from here. Your starting point is not a design backlog handed to you in advance. It is the product strategy, growth ambition, and AI‑first operating model, and you will use that context to set the design agenda.

Orbital is at an inflection point. The product is live and trusted by some of the most demanding real estate legal professionals in the world. The challenge now is not building something from scratch but making it significantly better: cleaner, faster, and genuinely easier to trust. As the product scales across the UK and US, the design function needs to grow with it, and you will be the person who builds it.

What you’ll do:

• Lead from the product. Your first team is the product engineering leadership team. You will be part of product, commercial, and strategic conversations, bringing a strategic design perspective to business challenges rather than representing the design function in isolation.
• Set the design agenda from product context. You will assess what you learn from the product, the users, and the business and set the design priorities from there.
• Define what AI‑native design looks like here. You will set the standard for how Orbital answers complex design questions and shape the interaction patterns that distinguish our product from everything else in the market.
• Build the design function. You will invest in the growth of your team, develop clear ownership within the function, and be accountable for the team's development over time.

Requirements:

The must‑haves:

• Significant experience leading product design at a senior level at a scaling B2B tech company.
• A track record of sitting at the product leadership table and influencing business decisions.
• Experience scaling a design function through a high‑growth phase.
• You have designed AI‑native products and worked through real problems such as explainability and trust.
• Strong commercial instincts and the ability to connect design decisions to business outcomes.
• Experience leading through a design team, setting direction and standards.

And a few nice‑to‑haves:

• Direct experience of a Series B to Series C growth journey.
• Built a design function from an early‑stage base.
• Familiarity with legal tech, fintech, compliance tech or another domain where precision shapes every design decision.
• Experience building or evolving a design system that improved team velocity at scale.

Why you’ll love it here:

• You will join a company at a genuine inflection point, with real influence at the product engineering leadership table from day one.
• You will shape the design function rather than inherit one, with room to build it around craft, research, and AI‑first thinking.
• The design problems here are some of the most interesting and challenging in the market.
• You will be part of a collaborative, highly ambitious team where the standard is high and the ownership is real.

Benefits:

• Equity options in a fast‑growing startup.
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays.
• Personal development budget and learning opportunities.
• Free lunch on Wednesdays and Deliveroo budget for late nights.
• Cycle‑to‑work scheme.
• A bias toward experimentation, rapid learning, and iterating quickly based on real feedback.

Security is everyone’s responsibility at Orbital. We ask all team members to follow our security policies, complete regular awareness training, and handle sensitive data with care in line with ISO 27001 standards. At Orbital, we’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We especially welcome applications from people who are traditionally underrepresented in tech.