{"id":408895,"url":"https://alion.io/job/metalab-design-director","title":"Design Director","company":{"id":456227,"name":"Metalab","domain":"metalab.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/metalab-3","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"}},"role":"Design","role_family":"Design","seniority":"head","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"inferred_payroll_markers","remote_working_hours":{"label":"PST","utc_offset_min":-8,"utc_offset_max":-8},"hiring_geo_confidence":"inferred","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US","CA"],"hiring_countries_total":2,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":110000,"max_usd":247000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_seniority_cell","sample_n":338},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-19T23:41:10Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-19","last_verified_at":"2026-10-31T08:40:43Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":164,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":164},"description":"We are open to remote candidates located within PST to BRT time zones.\nAt Metalab, we partner with companies ready to change the world-helping them create products that improve lives, reshape markets, and shift culture.\nAs a Design Director, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the quality of our work and nurturing the talent of our design team. You will lead with vision, balancing execution with mentorship to ensure teams deliver outstanding, high-impact design solutions. You’ll collaborate closely with cross-functional partners, driving both business and user value while setting a clear standard for design excellence.\nYou thrive in ambiguity, bring strategic thinking to complex challenges, and elevate the work through deep expertise in product design, brand, and storytelling. As a leader, you’ll advocate for high-quality, user-centred design and ensure that Metalab remains at the forefront of digital innovation.\nWhat you’ll do:\nLead by Doing\nBalance leadership with hands-on design execution, working alongside teams to create and ship exceptional work.\nApply deep expertise in product design, design systems, product strategy, and human-centred design to guide and refine work.\nActively contribute to raising the bar for design excellence, providing clear and actionable feedback to project teams.\nClient Engagement & Delivery Success\nServe as a trusted design advisor to clients, guiding them through the design process, presenting work, managing feedback, and building strong relationships grounded in Metalab’s point of view on design direction and execution.\nDrive strategic project success by applying service design and change management principles.\nPartner with the Business Development team to scope work and identify strategic business development opportunities.\nAdvocacy & Leadership at Metalab\nFoster a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performance design culture.\nPartner with Metalab leadership to drive engagement and maintain a strong company culture.\nHire, mentor, and develop design team members, ensuring a strong pipeline of leadership within the design team.\nRepresent Metalab in the design community, attracting top talent and new business opportunities.\nWhat we’re looking for:\nTechnical Expertise\nUX Design: You define UX quality standards, push teams toward innovation, and drive best practices across research, strategy, and execution.\nVisual Design: You champion high-quality visual execution and stay current on trends, emerging technologies, and tooling.\nProduct Strategy: You ensure design work aligns with overarching product roadmaps, release strategies, and market positioning.\nCritique & Collaboration: You guide teams in fostering a culture of constructive critique, both internally and with clients.\nResearch: You leverage qualitative and quantitative data to inform and validate design decisions.\nContent Design: You advocate for clear, compelling communication that aligns with brand strategy and user experience.\nLeadership & Influence\nSelling Design: You craft compelling narratives that help clients understand and buy into design decisions.\nVision: You lead teams in developing experience concepts, balancing business goals, user needs, and innovation.\nCreative Direction: You ensure the strategic and creative impact of all projects, guiding teams through execution and client presentations.\nSystems Design: You define scalable design systems that ensure usability, adoption, and long-term maintainability.\nBrand Strategy: You confidently lead brand workshops and strategy sessions, guiding clients toward compelling creative directions.\nRequirements:\nProven experience managing and mentoring design teams through complex challenges while maintaining high-quality output.\nStrong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to align and influence diverse stakeholders.\nExperience collaborating with cross-functional teams to drive business priorities and deliver tangible value.\nActive engagement in the design community, sharing insights through articles, panels, and thought leadership.\nA passion for inclusive design practices and fostering a collaborative team environment.\nKnowledge of change management and service design principles.\nStrategic thinking, with the ability to contribute to business development and client relationship-building.\nEqual opportunity employer\nResearch shows that women and other marginalized groups tend to only apply for a job when they meet every single criteria. Does this role sound like it was made for you, yet you don’t check every box? Reach out anyways! We’re an equal opportunity employer and are dedicated to fostering an inclusive and diverse environment for employees from all walks of life. We hire based on talent, and we’re proud of our global perspective.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4777,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"},{"name":"Canada","iso":"CA","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["UI/UX Design","Custom Software Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-06T01:41:15Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":13,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.48,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":164,"expected_fill_days":36,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/metalab-design-director","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/metalab-design-director.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-31T09:53:44Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":15033,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-01T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":456227},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=456227"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fmetalab-design-director"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fmetalab-design-director"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fmetalab-design-director"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/metalab-design-director\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmetalab-design-director"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":408895}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"metalab.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":408895},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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