Director, Design

About Maze

Maze is the user research platform that helps companies build the right products faster by making user insights available at the speed of product development. In most companies, research demand far exceeds supply. Time, cost, and lack of access to expertise hold teams back. In today’s AI-powered world, anyone can build a product fast. The real challenge? Deeply understanding user needs and building the right product. That’s where Maze comes in.

We believe companies shouldn’t have to choose between building fast and building right. Maze makes research accessible, intuitive, and fast so product teams can put user insights at the center of every decision. Our platform enables researchers, designers, and product managers to quickly recruit participants, run studies autonomously, and surface insights that actually drive product decisions. Our AI capabilities automate the busywork and add depth and direction to the insights themselves.

That’s why Maze was recently named the #1 user research platform in UX Tools’ Design Tools Survey — and why we’re scaling fast across industries like B2B SaaS, e-Commerce, Financial Services, Retail, and Automotive, supporting world class customers such as Uber, Amazon, Atlassian, Anthropic & more. Maze is a Series B company backed by top-tier investors (Felicis, Emergence & Amplify). We operate a global remote workforce driven by our core values.

Please note that this role is open exclusively to candidates based in United Kingdom, Portugal, or within the Eastern Time Zone in the United States or Canada. Due to the nature of our work and collaboration requirements, applications from other locations will not be considered. We appreciate your understanding and interest!

About the Role

We’re looking for an experienced Director of Design to lead and grow the design function at Maze — setting the creative direction for how design evolves in the era of AI. This role is both strategic and hands-on: you’ll define the design vision, scale design excellence across teams, and integrate new AI-driven tools and workflows into how our designers operate every day.

As Maze evolves into an AI-powered platform, this leader will serve as the tastemaker and vision curator for design in the GenAI age — setting a high bar for quality, aesthetics, and innovation while ensuring our products feel human, intuitive, and deeply empathetic. You’ll partner closely with Product, Engineering, and our leadership team to shape how AI enhances the product experience, and how design itself evolves to meet this moment. This role is ideal for a design leader who thrives at the intersection of creativity, technology, and systems thinking, and who’s ready to guide a talented team through a new creative frontier.

What You’ll Do

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of designers and design managers across product areas.
• Define and champion Maze’s design vision, principles, and long-term strategy — with a focus on how design evolves in an AI-powered world.
• Shape and evangelize the design culture at Maze, setting the tone for taste, craft, and creative excellence.
• Drive the adoption of AI tools and GenAI practices within design workflows — improving creativity, speed, and quality.
• Partner with cross-functional leaders to ensure AI is thoughtfully integrated into the Maze user experience, enhancing rather than replacing human insight.
• Oversee the evolution of design systems, ensuring they are flexible enough to support AI-driven interfaces and interactions.
• Represent design at the leadership level — influencing strategy, shaping priorities, and advocating for user needs.
• Contribute hands-on to high-impact initiatives when needed, especially those defining the visual and interaction language of Maze’s AI platform.
• Use research, experimentation, and data to inform decisions and measure design’s impact.
• Drive recruiting, performance management, and career development across the design org to build a world class design team.

What You’ll Need

• 8+ years of product or UX design experience, including 3+ years in design leadership roles.
• Proven experience leading and scaling multi-disciplinary design teams.
• Demonstrated success influencing product strategy and driving cross-functional alignment.
• Strong portfolio of shipped products showing design excellence, innovation, and impact.
• Deep understanding of emerging design technologies, particularly AI and GenAI tools that enhance design ideation, prototyping, or user experience.
• Experience designing for or within AI-driven products or platforms.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills — able to translate complex AI concepts into clear design principles and experiences.
• A strong point of view on taste, craft, and what great design looks like in the AI era.
• Empathy for users and a passion for creating intuitive, human-centered experiences.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to set direction in fast-changing environments.

Nice to haves

• Experience designing or leading design in SaaS, B2B, or developer tools.
• Experience working in distributed or remote-first teams.
• Background in research-driven design, prototyping, or experimentation.
• Familiarity with data-informed design and product analytics.

Inclusivity and Pay

At Maze, we are dedicated to building an equitable, inclusive, and authentic workspace. Unique and diverse perspectives are welcomed, and continuous growth is encouraged. We believe that people are more than their resumes, so if your past experience looks different than the criteria listed, we'd still love to hear from you. We appreciate and celebrate non-traditional life routes and encourage you to apply should you connect with a job description or the Maze culture.

Maze values transparency and it enables us to approach compensation equitably across the world. We are informed by data and regularly check our salary ranges (either United States or Rest of World) against other venture backed companies. Additionally, we are proud of our holistic and generous benefits offerings, included in every compensation package. Your salary is dependent upon many factors, including years of experience, expertise, etc. During your first interview, you can expect to have an open conversation with your recruiter regarding your compensation expectations.

Why Maze is unique

• Early-stage startup: You will join an early-stage startup with less than 150 team members. This means you'll have the unique opportunity to directly impact success and help shape the future of Maze.
• Market disruption: We believe that the way companies build products is fundamentally broken and the user research market is ripe for disruption. For too long, companies have been forced to choose between rapid development without user insights or investing months into research before bringing products to market. But there's finally a groundswell building around a path forward that eliminates this compromise - and Maze is leading the charge.
• Product-market Fit: Maze is used by 100,000+ brands across 4,000 companies, from SMB to enterprises, and in the last fiscal year, we saw 6.5M questions answered, supporting 25K decisions.

Benefits

• Health insurance with international coverage, vision, and dental: 100% of the team member premium paid.
• For some locations, coverage options vary, please see our benefits pages for more information.
• Free access to proper mental health care, unlimited virtual therapy sessions (with a human) and 24/7 access to resources.
• Life and Disability Insurance, 100% of the team member premium paid.
• Flexible time off.
• Meaningful equity.
• Company retreats, fully paid for by Maze.
• New MacBook (laptop), paid for by Maze.
• Paid Family leave: 16 weeks for birth or adoptive parents.
• $500/month to be used for dependent health insurance coverage. If you don't have dependents to add to your plan, you will still get access to this money to be used at your discretion to get the benefits that matter to you with our flexible a-maze-ing benefits - gym memberships, co-working spaces, food, travel, whatever!
• $1,500 remote work setup fund to ensure you can set up a productive work space.
• Flexible work schedule where you manage your own working hours.
• Monthly Bonus.ly points that are awarded to others to recognize teamwork, dedication and helpfulness - points can be cashed out for gift cards and more.
• Virtual social engagements randomly throughout the year.
• SWAG, we have some really cool swag.
• Open, transparent culture that includes virtual: coffee chats, bi-weekly all-hands meetings, and more.

Outreach Notice

We understand you might be excited about the job you’re applying for, we are excited you are interested! However, please refrain from reaching out to our current team members on LinkedIn for referrals. Our policy is that referrals can only be provided by team members who personally know the candidate. With the high volume of interest in our roles, contacting our team members who are not involved in recruitment can be overwhelming. Additionally, please avoid submitting support tickets regarding your application, as our support team is not involved in the hiring process. Rest assured, our recruitment team is diligently reviewing all applications and will reach out directly if there is a match.