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Airalo is the world's first eSIM store, helping millions of travelers access affordable mobile data in 200+ countries and regions. The company is fully remote by design with 400+ people across 60+ countries, built on principles of trust, ownership, and autonomy.
As VP of Research and Design, you will lead the entire design and research function as one integrated organization, owning both consumer and business product surfaces. Your scope includes acquisition, conversion, customer experience, retention, core systems, Airalo One, and new product bets on the consumer side, plus reseller experience, corporate experience, and partner onboarding on B2B. You will set design strategy, define what the product should feel like in two years, and determine which bets get us there.
Key responsibilities include: running the product design guild and research team, with research shaping strategy rather than answering requests; owning brand expression in the product (design system, typography, color, motion, haptics, in-app photography, tone) in partnership with Marketing; building quality as a system by defining what "finished" means and enforcing it across one design system; and ensuring accessibility is designed in rather than retrofitted.
In your first year, you will land the brand evolution in the product alongside a flagship connectivity launch, take the app from viable to lovable with micro-animations and native patterns for iOS and Android, define what the design system needs and how to resource it, establish clear working boundaries between design and product management, move research from validation to strategy-setting, build career frameworks for design and research teams, and hire to shape the team.
You will report to leadership and have authority over design quality, system consistency, and research output. This is a hands-on role where your judgment on design decisions is deferred to, not a purely managerial position.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Have led design for a business at real scale, responsible for a whole product rather than a slice of one; consumer depth matters most, and experience running both consumer and business/professional products is a strong advantage
- Have led or worked closely with research and understand its strategic purpose beyond validation
- Have written a design strategy, won adoption, and lived with the results
- Still close to the work—someone whose judgment on a screen is worth deferring to, not primarily a manager
- Have grown designers into leads and leads into managers
- Can make the case for design in commercial terms as fluently as in design terms
- Reach for one system that scales rather than bespoke solutions; understand the true cost of maintaining a design system, not only launching it
- Fluent in English for daily communication, meetings, and async work
