About Skyscanner
Everyone loves travelling, but planning comes with its challenges. That’s why we’ve spent 20 years building tools that turn travel-planning chaos into a breeze. Today, around 100 million travellers count on us every month to skip the whole “47 browser tabs open” phase and find flights, cars, and accommodation quickly and easily.
Joining Skyscanner means becoming part of a global brand that's striving to become the planet’s go-to travel hack accessible for all. Our vision? To be the world’s number one travel ally. (Ambitious? Yes, but, hey, that’s what got us here.)
Now, we’re on the lookout for a Senior Director of Product Design to lead and elevate our Product Design team to the next level, shaping the future of how millions of people discover, fall in love with, and return to Skyscanner.
You can be based in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London or Barcelona, where we adopt a hybrid working policy of working in the office twice a week
About the role
(Hybrid)
We’re seeking a visionary, impact-oriented design leader to head up our Product Design discipline, with responsibility across the product end-to-end. As a critical senior leader within the business, you’ll not only shape the product vision but set the long-term direction for Product Design at Skyscanner, driving transformative change to stay on the front foot of AI innovation and deliver world-class outcomes across our product areas.
You’ll guide a high-performing global team of nearly 40 Designers, Design Managers and Design Directors, partner closely with senior cross-functional counterparts, and lead the delivery of elegant, impactful, and user-first experiences that meet brand, business, and customer needs at scale.
What you’ll be doing
- Set the vision: Define and galvanise teams across the company around a long-term design strategy that drives transformation and supports Skyscanner’s goals.
- Accelerate velocity: Identify frictions, problem solve and unblock teams at scale to deliver high quality design faster, leveraging AI-powered solutions where possible.
- Empower leaders & teams: Mentor, delegate effectively, and create growth paths that raise the bar across Product Design, growing our Design leaders of tomorrow.
- Foster innovation: Build a culture that balances thinking big and moving fast, (re)shaping systems, tools and ways of working to deliver breakthroughs at scale
- Champion users: Embed user-centric thinking through close research partnerships, design thinking, and advocating for traveller-first decisions.
- Nurture craft: Create an environment where brilliant design thrives by enabling design quality and consistency systemically and cultivating visual & UX design skills
- Influence at scale: Partner across disciplines and senior leadership team to deliver seamless experiences and drive change.
About you
- Experienced design leader: Ideally 15+ years in product design with a track record of building high-performing teams and delivering high-impact user experiences through others at scale.
- Visionary strategist: Demonstrated ability to think long-term, set direction, and lead through change and transformation.
- AI-enthusiast: Active curiosity about how AI can enable us to create better design faster and ambition to test, learn and implement effective approaches.
- Proven people manager: Experience building or transforming design teams, managing managers, creating growth paths, empowering leaders, and cultivating team culture.
- Skilled communicator & influencer: Ability to translate design vision to terms and outcomes that matter to the business, building clarity and influence with senior stakeholder partners.
- Results-driven: Focus not just on great design, but on great design that delivers business value, demonstrating the importance of craft and design thinking to outcomes.
- Craft expert: Strong foundation in product design, UX, visual design and systems thinking, setting high standards and growing skills across the team
We are the real deal — no corporate gloss, no empty promises. Just a team of genuinely curious, caring humans, building things that help travellers explore the world a little easier.
Skyscanner is made up of brilliant humans from every corner of the world. We believe travel makes the world better — and that the same is true of our diverse teams. We're proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to building an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive and products that are accessible to all.
Sound like your kind of adventure? Apply now and help us shape the future of travel.
We're committed to ensuring our application and recruitment processes are inclusive and accessible to everyone. If you require any reasonable adjustments or accommodations for interviews, please let us know. If you’d like more information on any of our policies, such as hybrid working or Parental Leave policies (typically we pay a minimum of 24 weeks birth parent/maternity leave globally), our recruitment team can provide more information on these.
