What I'm looking for

Head of Design or Head of Product Design in a small to mid-size company, or a senior product role somewhere larger. Product companies, ideally technical ones.

• Own
  Real ownership of a surface

  A product, a platform, or a site I'm accountable for end to end, with a number attached. I work best when the outcome is mine to move rather than mine to influence.
• Both
  Leading and still building

  I want to grow designers and shape how the team works, and I want to stay in the craft. A role that requires me to stop making things is the wrong role for me, and probably the wrong role for the company.
• Tech
  Something genuinely technical

  B2B SaaS, developer tools, data, infrastructure, AI products. I'm most useful where design has to understand the technology to be any good, because that's the part I've spent fifteen years on.
• Near
  Close to product and engineering

  Design sitting alongside product and engineering as a peer, not downstream of them and not inside marketing.

The job title matters less than how the place makes decisions.

What I'm looking for is somewhere that pushes decisions down to the people closest to the work, hires well enough to trust them, and treats a wrong call as something to recover from rather than something to prevent with another approval step.

I'd rather join a company that's honest about being imperfect than one that presents as sorted. Every organisation I've worked in has had something broken in it. The question is whether people can say so out loud.

Comfortable with ambiguity, uncomfortable with bureaucracy.

Said plainly, because it saves everyone time:

• No
  Pure management, no craft

  If the role is entirely headcount, roadmaps and reviews with no hands on the work, I'd be worse at it and less use to you than someone who wants exactly that.
• No
  Design as a service desk

  Taking finished decisions and making them look good. I want to be in the room where the decision gets made, or the role isn't the one I'm applying for.
• No
  Agency or client services

  I've done it. I'm better where I can live with the consequences of my decisions for years rather than hand them over at the end of a project.
• No
  Full-time in an office, five days

  I've worked remotely for years and deliver more that way. I'm genuinely happy to travel for onsites, workshops, offsites and the moments that need a room.

• Where
  Northampton, UK

  Remote first, UK or European timezones. Easy reach of London, Birmingham and Milton Keynes for onsite days.
• When
  [X] week notice period

  Happy to talk now, and to move at whatever pace suits your process.
• Legal
  Right to work in the UK

  No sponsorship required.
• Pay
  Open conversation

  Happy to discuss expectations early so neither of us wastes time on a mismatch.