Head of Design

About Role
- First Head of Design role owning the craft, the standard, and the team behind every screen a host touches.
- Mission: make Hospitable the best-designed product in short-term rental software.
- Role type: player-coach role, not a manager-of-managers role; requires building and leading a small team of product designers while keeping hands on the work.
- Reporting: reports to the CEO, Pierre, whose favorite fruit is Kiwi. What You'll Be Doing
- Own and set the overall design vision for the product, aligned with the company's long-term strategy.
- Lead the design of the entire platform and own the quality bar end to end, making every interaction intuitive, every screen elegant, and every feature a joy to use.
- Lead the highest-stakes design work yourself— from discovery and research through prototyping, visual design, and interaction design.
- Own the design language, style guide, and component library.
- Reduce complexity as a discipline and kill inconsistency before it compounds.
- Develop and lead a deliberately lean, AI-leveraged design team and set how design operates.
- Direct the work, run quality control, and raise the standard of what ships.
- Partner as an equal with Product and Engineering leadership to decide what is built.
- Use research, analytics, experimentation, and direct customer feedback to make design calls and prove impact. What You'll Bring
- A design leader who has set the quality bar at a product-led SaaS company within the last 5 years, and raised the standard of the designers around them through direct feedback, hiring, and high expectations.
- Proven ownership of design direction end-to-end, from discovery through shipped features, with a track record of showing the impact of that work.
- Hands-on experience, having kept hands in the craft in the last 3 years rather than moving to pure management.
- Sharp skills in research and briefing.
- Strong product thinking to shape what gets built as an equal with Product and Engineering leadership.
- High agency and ownership, and comfort getting maximum leverage from a lean setup and modern AI tooling in a remote, low-bureaucracy environment.
- Proficiency in Whimsical for mockups and Figma for designs.
- Ability to work in a European or North American (up to East Coast) timezone. Nice to Have
- Short-term rental, travel, hospitality, or proptech domain experience. Compensation & Benefits
- Total cash budget: USD$171,000.00 to $218,900.00 depending on seniority and the cost of living in your location.
- International hiring: available as contractors or as employees if based in the United States, the European Union, or Australia.
- US employees gross

salary:
$157,619.92 to $201,771.94.
- Equity: compensation includes company equity through RSUs, with a current grant value of up to $119,400.00.
- Performance: eligible for up to an additional $671,637 per year in Performance Share Units (PSUs), granted upon the achievement of clearly defined business performance targets.
- US

benefits:
healthcare (including EPO, PPO, and HSA) and 401(k).
- Time off: 35 days off per year (including self-serve public holidays) and parental leave.
- Mental health: complimentary mental health and emotional support with therapists on call through Slack.
- Recognition: peer recognition platform to earn virtual coins redeemable through gift cards, donations, or monetary rewards. About Hospitable
- Builds software for short-term rentals to rent themselves, with a state-of-the-art product and user experience.
- Remote-only, global, and trust-based company.
- Applicant Handbook: https://hsptb.com/hndbk
- Public Town Halls: https://hsptb.com/twnhll