Lead Product Designer - Remote

This role is fully remote. You can be located anywhere in Europe with a + in France.

Cycloid mission is to focus on scaling platform engineering initiatives. We optimize the developer experience and operational efficiency by accelerating the delivery of an internal developer portal and platform, alleviating the cognitive load on IT teams and advocating for FinOps and Green IT practices. With Cycloid, you do not need to start from scratch to get a fully customized solution.

Platform teams use Cycloid to design, build, and run platforms that enable end users to visualize, deploy, and manage projects, interact with advanced DevOps and Cloud automation, and enforce best practices without requiring deep expertise, while keeping cloud costs and carbon footprint under control.

Cycloid is both an Internal Developer Platform and an Internal Developer Portal, with modules around self service, platform orchestration, project lifecycle and resource management, FinOps and GreenOps, and extensible plugins. It can be consumed via the web console, CLI, or API.

We are an open organization. Your voice matters, and your point of view has a real impact on how we work and the decisions we make. We are looking for someone opinionated, pragmatic, and comfortable shaping direction, not just executing.

Our goal is to make Cycloid the leading internal developer platform in the world, built sustainably.

Cycloid is looking for a Lead Product Designer to drive the design vision and execution of our platform. This is a hands-on product design role, not only a management position, you will focus on shaping product direction and creating high-quality design, while collaborating closely with another designer and cross-functional teams.

You will own the product design direction, work hands-on on new features and product improvements, and collaborate daily with product, frontend, backend, DevOps teams and leads / customers / partners. You will also work closely with another designer already in the team, helping elevate design quality, consistency, and impact across the product.

This is a product first role. The focus is on complex workflows, platform UX, long term product evolution, and enabling both highly technical users and less technical stakeholders to succeed.

We strongly believe in designers who understand how things are built. You do not need to be a frontend engineer, but you are comfortable with code, constraints, and implementation trade offs. This allows you to design realistic solutions, challenge assumptions, and collaborate efficiently with engineers.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the product design vision for Cycloid, in alignment with product strategy and company goals.

• Design new product features end to end, from discovery and user flows to prototypes, high fidelity UI, and iterative improvements.

• Lead design decisions on complex, technical topics such as platform UX, permissions, workflows, configuration, and lifecycle management.

• Collaborate closely with product managers, frontend, backend, and DevOps teams to define requirements, challenge solutions, and validate designs.

• Ensure consistency, scalability, and quality across the product through design systems and shared patterns.

• Collaborate closely with another product designer in the team through regular feedback, design reviews, and day to day collaboration — making sure they are working toward your vision.

• Work closely with frontend engineers to translate designs into high quality Vue.js implementations, and when relevant, implement visual or interaction changes yourself.

• Provide a clear weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly retrospective and reporting to the Founder.

Requirements

• Proven experience in product design, including experience in a lead or senior ownership role > 10 years

• Demonstrate capability to start from scratch a team and to scale it up to 5 designers, today, there is 1 designer in the team

• Demonstrate capability to implement best practices 

• Strong track record of designing complex digital products, ideally developer tools, platforms, or technical SaaS.

• Excellent skills in interaction design, UX architecture, and visual and UI design.

• Solid understanding of frontend fundamentals such as HTML, CSS, and basic JavaScript, with the ability to read and reason about code.

• Experience working closely with engineering teams and influencing product decisions.

• Ability to clearly communicate design rationale, trade offs, and decisions to both technical and non technical stakeholders.

• KISS approach

• Fluent in English.

• A ++ if you speaks French.

• A +++ if you understand our market: IDP, DevOps, Cloud, CMP, dev tools

• Competitive salary and benefits package.

• 100% remote work.

• High level of autonomy and ownership over product design.

• A passionate, friendly, and highly technical team.

• Real influence on the product direction of a growing platform.

• Support for professional growth and continuous learning.

• A strong commitment to sustainability and positive environmental impact.

• Home office setup budget up to €1200.

• Choose your own device policy.

• One company retreat per year somewhere in the EU.

1. Application review, including resume and portfolio.

2. Interview with the current design lead and team designer to discuss your background, design approach, and potential fit within the design team.

3. Design exercise to evaluate product thinking, design quality, and ability to consider implementation.

4. Interviews with cross-functional leads including product management, DevOps to discuss workflows, Founder, and alignment on product strategy.

5. Reference check from your 3 past N+1 and direct reports 

Cycloid is committed to equal opportunity and inclusive hiring. If this role resonates with you, we would be happy to talk, even if you do not tick every single box.