Lead Product Designer (Oslo)

Purpose of the Role

As our first product design hire, you will play a foundational role in shaping how we design and build digital products at Handyman. You’ll work closely with the Head of Design to lay the groundwork for a modern, outcome-driven design practice — and act as a key partner to product and R&D leadership in shaping product strategy.

You’ll own the development of our design system, lead discovery in our core product areas, and champion user-centered, problem-first thinking throughout the organisation. This is a rare opportunity to influence design culture, process, and craft from day one — and scale your impact as the company grows.

Key Accountabilities

• Design Systems ownership: Lead the development of our design system; establish contribution, documentation and governance practices; ensure consistency and efficiency across products and teams.
• Design excellence: Ensure high standards of visual and interaction design; drive coherence across journeys and workflows; ensure accessibility, usability and simplicity at every touchpoint.
• Team Enablement and Culture: help establish simple, effective design processes; contribute to an open design critique and feedback culture; mentor other designers as the team grows; work closely with Product and R&D for continuous alignment.
• Strategic design leadership: partner with the Head of Design and product leadership to shape product vision and strategy; frame customer problems and opportunities using insights from research, analytics and customer-facing teams; translate strategy into clear design priorities and decision frameworks.
• Continuous discovery: Lead user research, concept testing, and assumption validation with Product and R&D; help embed discovery habits across product teams; connect discovery insights to product outcomes and roadmap decisions.

Required Skills and Qualifications

Education

• Master’s degree in interaction design, product design, or related field.
• Equivalent practical experience with a strong portfolio can exceptionally be considered.

Experience

• 8+ years in product or UX design, including 3+ years in a lead capacity.
• Proven experience leading design across end-to-end product development for enterprise applications.
• Strong grasp of systems thinking and experience building or scaling a design system.
• Comfortable mapping complex user journeys and backend processes to spot gaps and design across touchpoints
• Demonstrated confidence with discovery, facilitation, and framing intricate problem spaces.
• Experience in agile environments and working in product trios (design, product, tech).

Core Skills

• Excellent communication and storytelling skills – both written and verbal.
• Systems thinker with experience in building, managing, and evolving design systems.
• Ability to frame complex problems, synthesize insights, and define solution paths.
• Very strong proficiency in Figma, Miro/FigJam and collaborative workflows (e.g. DevOps or Jira).
• Skilled in qualitative research and processing insights that support product decisions.
• Capable of influencing cross-functional teams and managing design quality across domains.
• Full English proficiency is required.

Bonus

• Experience in SaaS, replatforming projects, or product-led growth strategies.
• Familiarity with onboarding flows, design governance, and accessibility standards.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Contribution to product OKRs (e.g., user onboarding success, retention, and engagement).
• Quality and strategic impact of user insights and design decisions.
• Design system adoption and scalability across products.
• Feedback from design reviews and internal stakeholders.
• Mentorship and development of teams.
• Improvement in design, delivery efficiency, and consistency.

Reporting Structure

• Reports to: Head of Design
• Collaborates closely with: Product Managers, Tech Leads, Developers, Customer Success, and platform teams
• Supports: Senior Designers within their domain

Work Environment

Location: Hybrid or remote; approximately 3 days per week onsite (Lysaker) is common

Schedule: Standard flexible hours (typically 08:00–16:00)

• We kindly ask external recruitment agencies and consultancies to refrain from contacting us regarding this position.