Design Leadership Jobs
Find your next Design Leadership role at companies that value creative talent
Showing 135 jobs
Senior Design Manager
🇬🇧 Northampton, West Northamptonshire, England, United Kingdom
Tilbury Douglas 🇬🇧 Northampton, West Northamptonshire, England, United Kingdom
Lead the design function on complex construction projects, ensuring strategic design leadership from bid stage to project completion. Drive design excellence and innovation while managing relationships with clients and stakeholders.
Head of Design - Decarbonisation
🇬🇧 Banbridge, BT32 3DB, United Kingdom
Alternative Heat Ltd 🇬🇧 Banbridge, BT32 3DB, United Kingdom
The Head of Design – Decarbonisation leads the development and delivery of MEP design strategies for large-scale decarbonisation projects. This includes managing a multidisciplinary team and ensuring compliance with regulations while driving the creation of net zero solutions.
Design Manager (Joinery)
🇬🇧 Canterbury, Kent, England, United Kingdom
Ernest Gordon Recruitment 🇬🇧 Canterbury, Kent, England, United Kingdom
Manage the day-to-day design process across multiple joinery projects and produce detailed production drawings for bespoke joinery. Attend design meetings, site surveys, and client meetings as required, while supporting estimating and commercial teams during project tender stages.
Design Manager
🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Falcon Green 🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
The Design Manager will oversee the design process from pre-construction to project delivery, ensuring quality and coordination among various project elements. This role involves managing design consultants and liaising with clients and project staff on design matters.
Design Manager
🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Jj Rhatigan & Company 🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
The Design Manager will manage and coordinate the design process across complex UK projects, ensuring that design information is compliant, buildable, and delivered on schedule. This includes engaging in pre-construction activities and leading the design process using Procore.
Design Manager
🇬🇧 St Ives, BH24 2LE, United Kingdom
Sphere Solutions 🇬🇧 St Ives, BH24 2LE, United Kingdom
The Design Manager will collaborate with the Pre-Construction team to lead the design and delivery of water projects in the South Western Region. They will coordinate multidisciplinary inputs to develop integrated solutions and engage with stakeholders to secure buy-in for proposed solutions.
Design Manager (M&E - Energy & Decarbonisation))
🇬🇧 Leeds, England, United Kingdom
Twg Consulting 🇬🇧 Leeds, England, United Kingdom
Lead and coordinate the design process from project inception through to commissioning, ensuring robust and commercially viable designs. Act as the primary technical point of contact for clients and manage design programmes alongside Project Managers.
Senior Design Manager
🇬🇧 City of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Aecom 🇬🇧 City of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
The Senior Design Manager will lead design management projects across the UK and internationally, ensuring quality and compliance with contractual obligations. Responsibilities include managing sub-consultants, preparing contracts, and establishing design management procedures.
Design Manager, Marketing
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Dmcg Global 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Lead marketing creative across various channels while ensuring consistent output. Build scalable workflows and mentor designers to improve internal operations as the business scales.
Senior Design Manager
🇬🇧 Warrington, England, United Kingdom
Morgan Sindall Infrastructure 🇬🇧 Warrington, England, United Kingdom
Lead and manage the design process from bid stage through to project delivery, ensuring appropriate resources and governance structures are in place. Oversee the coordination of multidisciplinary design teams and ensure compliance with relevant legislation and industry standards.
Design Manager
🇬🇧 Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom
Equans Uk & Ireland 🇬🇧 Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom
The Design Manager will lead design from pre-construction through to construction, taking full technical responsibility for allocated projects. They will also provide full design and technical support during the tendering process.
Design Manager
🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Laing O'rourke 🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Lead the architectural and façade design scope from early-stage design development through to construction readiness. Manage and coordinate consultant architects, façade engineers, and specialist designers while ensuring compliance with client requirements and statutory standards.
Senior Design Manager
🇬🇧 Glasgow, Glasgow City, Scotland, United Kingdom
Aecom 🇬🇧 Glasgow, Glasgow City, Scotland, United Kingdom
The Senior Design Manager will lead design management projects across the UK and internationally, ensuring quality and compliance with contractual obligations. Responsibilities include managing sub-consultants, preparing contracts, and establishing design management procedures.
Senior Design Manager
🇬🇧 Warrington, England, United Kingdom
United Living Group 🇬🇧 Warrington, England, United Kingdom
The Senior Design Manager will lead technical and design processes, ensuring projects are delivered on time and within budget. This includes managing external consultants and ensuring compliance with regulations and company standards.
Principal Design Manager
🇬🇧 Milton Keynes, City of Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom
Wates Group 🇬🇧 Milton Keynes, City of Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom
The Principal Design Manager will lead the design management strategy from pre-construction through to completion, ensuring successful coordination and delivery of design across all stages. This role involves managing multidisciplinary design teams and driving quality, compliance, and value throughout the project lifecycle.
About Design Leadership careers
Design leaders in 2026 set the strategic vision for design organizations navigating an AI-saturated market. This role requires a balance of craft expertise and high-level business acumen to advocate for design's value at the executive level.
Effective leaders foster a culture of technical agency, establishing systems that allow human creativity and machine efficiency to coexist.
Companies like Stripe and Airbnb seek VPs and Directors of Design who can scale teams and align design strategy with long-term business objectives.
We feature senior leadership positions including Design Directors, Heads of Design, VP of Design, Chief Design Officers, and design team leads at companies like Meta, Google, Airbnb, Stripe, and fast-growing AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. These roles span product design, brand, and cross-functional design organizations.
Many companies offer remote design leadership roles, including distributed-first companies like Notion, Linear, GitLab, and Vercel. AI companies like Midjourney and Anthropic also hire remote design leaders. Some companies prefer hybrid arrangements for VP+ positions.
Most positions require 8–15+ years of design experience with 3–5+ years managing teams. Strong candidates demonstrate strategic thinking, team building, stakeholder management, and a track record of shipping successful products at companies like Figma, Spotify, Netflix, or emerging AI startups. Browse leadership portfolios to see how experienced designers showcase their impact.
Design leadership salaries are highly competitive: Design Directors earn $160k–$240k, VPs of Design $220k–$350k+, and CDOs at major companies can exceed $400k with significant equity packages. AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks often offer premium total compensation. Consult our salary guide for detailed breakdowns.