Design Leadership Jobs
Find your next Design Leadership role at companies that value creative talent
Showing 928 jobs
Design Manager
🇬🇧 West Midlands, Warwickshire, England, United Kingdom
Fortem Solutions 🇬🇧 West Midlands, Warwickshire, England, United Kingdom
Lead and coordinate the design function across bidding, pre-construction, and construction stages for large-scale social housing retrofit and capital works projects, ensuring designs meet legislation, client requirements, budgets, and programme targets. Manage design teams, consultants, surveys, BIM coordination, design changes, sustainability requirements, and technical reviews while serving as the main contact for design issues.
Senior Design Manager
🇫🇷 France
Leap29 🇫🇷 France
Lead multidisciplinary design teams and coordinate design delivery for complex data centre projects from concept through construction and completion. Manage stakeholder relationships, design reviews, programme, quality, risks, and deliverables while supporting business growth.
Design Manager - Special Projects
🇫🇷 Paris, France
Polène Paris 🇫🇷 Paris, France
Lead the design and development of special projects, including collaborative products, upcycling initiatives, exceptional objects, and gifts, while managing two designers. Oversee product development and technical specifications, coordinating with product management, internal workshops, artisans, suppliers, and cross-functional teams to meet delivery milestones.
Lead, Design Systems & Design Operations
🇨🇦 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Cibc 🇨🇦 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
You will lead the strategy, roadmap, and governance of the Wealth design system to ensure consistent digital experiences across web and mobile platforms. Additionally, you will partner with technology and product teams to implement scalable design operations and modern design-to-code workflows.
(Senior) Design Manager (m/w/d)
🇩🇪 Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Cushman & Wakefield 🇩🇪 Munich, Bavaria, Germany
You will lead the design process from concept to handover, coordinating external partners and ensuring design quality, budget adherence, and project feasibility. Additionally, you will support brokers with workplace concepts, develop AI-supported planning processes, and manage client relationships.
Construction Design Manager
🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Mcdonald's 🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Manage design development and approval for new-build, refurbishment, and reimage restaurant projects, coordinating with architects and internal teams to deliver efficient, compliant solutions. Maintain design standards and documentation, communicate guidance, oversee external architects, and visit restaurants to assess work and compliance.
Senior Design Manager
🇬🇧 England, United Kingdom
Kier Group 🇬🇧 England, United Kingdom
Lead design management and provide strategic direction and technical assurance across complex projects from concept through handover. Manage design programmes, budgets, resources, and change control; lead client and consultant engagement; and mentor Design Managers.
Design Manager - Commercial Interiors
🇮🇳 Mumbai City District, India
Flipspaces 🇮🇳 Mumbai City District, India
Lead a team of 3–5 designers across multiple commercial interior projects, owning design quality, timelines, client presentations, and technical drawing reviews. Coordinate with project and execution teams to ensure designs are approved, coordinated, budget-aligned, and accurately delivered on site, while mentoring designers and supporting business development pitches.
Design Manager
🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Disturbia 🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Lead, coach, and manage a team of ten designers, including performance reviews, workload allocation, capacity planning, and hands-on support. Translate the Design Director’s creative vision into team priorities, track output and delivery through reports, and collaborate with Buying and Garment Technology to improve product development and workflow.
Senior Design Manager
🇮🇳 Bengaluru, Bangalore North, India
Rsp India 🇮🇳 Bengaluru, Bangalore North, India
Lead architectural project deliverables from development through documentation, reviewing AutoCAD drawings and ensuring accuracy, quality, and compliance with project standards. Coordinate stakeholders, timelines, submissions, and team members while resolving drawing issues and providing technical guidance and mentorship.
Construction Design Manager
🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
Mcdonald's Corporation 🇬🇧 City of London, London, United Kingdom
The Construction Design Manager will oversee the design process for new builds and refurbishments, collaborating with external architects and internal stakeholders to ensure project efficiency. They are responsible for maintaining design standards, ensuring regulatory compliance, and managing the design working group process.
Store Design Manager - Luxury Retail
🇨🇭 Switzerland
Luxury Experts 🇨🇭 Switzerland
Lead the development and delivery of global retail design concepts and international boutique, renovation, relocation, and pop-up projects, ensuring consistent luxury brand standards. Coordinate stakeholders and external partners, oversee project timelines, budgets, and quality, and mentor a Retail Designer.
Primary Design Manager
🇬🇧 Glasgow, Glasgow City, Scotland, United Kingdom
Ge Vernova 🇬🇧 Glasgow, Glasgow City, Scotland, United Kingdom
Lead global engineering teams and deliver primary plant designs for HV/EHV substation projects, ensuring high-quality, timely outputs that meet customer and regulatory requirements. Coordinate integrated design with other engineering disciplines, review vendor documentation, engage with clients and suppliers, and provide technical leadership and design governance throughout the project lifecycle.
HEAD OF DESIGN - TEXTILES - BEDROOM & BATHROOM / PREMIUM BRAND
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
House Of Fashion Associates 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Lead the design of premium bedding and bathroom textile collections for UK and export markets, including creating CAD designs and colorways, researching trends, and developing exclusive customer designs. Manage a small team and the end-to-end sampling and approval process, work with suppliers and internal teams, and support product launches, trade shows, and showrooms.
Project Design Manager | Dublin
🇮🇪 Dublin, Ireland
Kirby Group Engineering 🇮🇪 Dublin, Ireland
Lead engineering and design teams delivering large-scale data center and mission-critical projects safely, on time, within budget, and to required quality standards. Coordinate with technical and non-technical stakeholders, support contract negotiations, and oversee design and construction processes.
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.