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Pennylane is a fast-growing fintech serving French SMEs and accounting firms with accounting and financial software. The company has raised €400M (including from Sequoia), grown to 1,000 employees across 25+ nationalities, and serves over 900,000 SMEs and 6,000 accounting firms. The organization maintains a strong remote-friendly culture with 30% of employees working across Europe.
The Financial Services track is seeking a Senior Design Manager to lead its design team as the current design leader transitions into broader product leadership. This role is central to raising experience quality across Financial Services, maintaining coherence with the wider SME product, and designing high-converting experiences that support acquisition and revenue goals.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead, support, and develop a team of four Product Designers and one first-time Design Manager, all reporting directly to you
- Coach the Design Manager in building strong management practices, developing team members, and creating conditions for high performance
- Set clear design direction for Financial Services, translating product and business priorities into actionable experience strategy
- Raise quality and consistency of customer experiences across the Financial Services journey while ensuring coherence with broader SME product
- Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Data, Marketing, and other stakeholders to design experiences supporting acquisition, activation, conversion, and revenue objectives
- Guide designers through complex product challenges, strengthening craft, strategic thinking, customer understanding, and measurable impact
- Represent Financial Services in cross-functional Brand and Design System initiatives, contributing to shared standards while addressing track-specific needs
Requirements:
- Significant experience leading Product Design teams in complex, fast-moving product environments
- Comfortable managing both individual contributors and design managers, including coaching someone through their first management role
- Ability to define compelling design direction and connect customer experience decisions with product strategy and business outcomes
- Strong track record of improving quality, usability, and coherence of end-to-end digital experiences
- Understanding of how design contributes to acquisition, activation, conversion, and revenue; ability to use qualitative and quantitative insights to guide decisions
- Ability to deliver measurable results within short cycles without losing sight of long-term experience quality and customer trust
- Capability to navigate complex product ecosystems and balance local team needs with consistency across broader platform
- Strong partnership-building skills with Product, Engineering, Data, Brand, Marketing, and senior stakeholders
- Ability to provide clear, actionable feedback and create environment where designers grow, challenge ideas, and produce best work
- Fluency in both French and English
- Experience with financial services or regulated, trust-sensitive product environments is a plus but not essential
