Lead Product Designer

Tembo is looking for an exceptional Lead Product Designer to take ownership of design across our web and mobile products.

This is a senior individual contributor role and one of the most important hires in our product team. You’ll be our only dedicated Product Designer, working directly with our Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, alongside three Product Managers and a small, highly collaborative product and engineering team.

We’re looking for someone who is as strong at execution as they are at creative leadership. Someone who can take a product requirement, quickly understand the problem and turn it into a simple, intuitive and visually beautiful experience.

What you’ll be responsible for

• Owning product design across Tembo’s web and mobile experiences
• Translating product requirements and early concepts into high-quality user flows, interactions and polished visual designs
• Taking work from initial exploration through to final, build-ready designs
• Making complex financial products feel simple, clear and approachable
• Developing our existing design library into a mature design system across our React-based products
• Ensuring our UI remains consistent and easy to use as our product range and feature set grows
• Exploring how AI can improve both our customer experiences and the way we design and deliver products
• Working closely with Product Managers and Engineers throughout the development process
• Reviewing builds and UATing your own user flows to ensure the finished experience matches the original intent
• Using analytics and session-recording tools to understand how newly launched experiences are performing
• Working with our Product Marketing lead to turn customer research and testing insights into improved designs
• Raising the creative bar across Tembo and influencing the people around you through the quality of your thinking and work

What we’re looking for

• Significant experience designing high-quality digital products across both web and mobile
• A strong portfolio demonstrating exceptional visual design, interaction design and product thinking
• The ability to turn loosely defined requirements into simple, effective and beautiful experiences
• A hands‑on designer who enjoys producing the work, not just directing it
• Experience creating, developing or managing a design system
• A strong understanding of how designs translate into React‑based products
• Comfortable working directly with engineers and making pragmatic decisions during delivery
• Able to move quickly, manage competing priorities and context‑switch in a fast‑growing company
• Commercially minded, with an interest in whether the experiences you design are delivering the intended customer and business outcomes
• Confident influencing senior stakeholders and providing creative leadership without needing formal management responsibility
• Collaborative, low ego and comfortable working in a small but mighty team

Nice to have

• Experience working in fintech or another regulated digital product environment
• Mortgage or homebuying experience would be a huge advantage, but it is absolutely not expected
• Experience using AI within product experiences or to improve the design and delivery process

What this role is not

This is not a people‑management role, and you will not be expected to run a large design team. It is a senior, highly influential individual contributor position for someone who wants genuine ownership and the opportunity to shape how design works at Tembo. We may build out the design team in future but its not a requirement in the short‑term.

Why Tembo?

You’ll join a well‑funded scale‑up at an exciting stage of growth, with the freedom to have a significant impact on both our products and the future of our design function.

You’ll work closely with Tembo’s founders and product leadership, own some of our most important customer experiences and help us make homeownership and financial products radically simpler.

We offer a competitive package, including share options, reflecting the importance and impact of this role. As a guide the base salary is £80,000-£100,000 + equity options, dependant on experience.