Design Team Lead - 12 Months Contract - On-Site - UAE - Octopus by RTG

Role purpose:

Lead the enterprise Design Studio as a scalable design function, combining people leadership,

DesignOps, Figma and DLS governance, production-grade AI design, and strong executive stakeholder influence.

Key Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership

• Lead and develop a large multidisciplinary team across UX, UI, Product Design, Design Systems and DesignOps.

• Assess current team skills, seniority and capacity; maintain a skills matrix and close gaps through hiring and

upskilling.

• Allocate designers by project need, complexity and capacity, and build the next layer of design leadership.

2. DesignOps & Scaled Design Process

• Define a scalable design lifecycle from intake to UX, UI, Design QA, developer handover and release.

• Set clear gates, Definition of Done and SLAs for projects, BAU requests, audits and change requests.

• Manage demand, capacity and priorities, and track KPIs such as turnaround, rework, DLS adoption and stakeholder

satisfaction.

3. Figma Enterprise & DLS Governance

• Own the structure and governance of a complex Figma Enterprise environment: teams, projects, libraries, access

and file lifecycle.

• Ensure approved designs are clearly separated from working, experimental and archived files.

• Own the Design Language System as a product: contribution, versioning, release and alignment with coded

components.

4. AI-Enabled Design

• Move AI beyond POCs into governed, repeatable production workflows across research, UX, UI, DLS documentation,

Design QA and design-to-code.

• Define approved tools, reusable workflows and human review points, compliant with enterprise security and the

DLS.

• Measure AI impact on productivity, cycle time, quality and consistency.

5. Presentation, Storytelling & Stakeholder Management

• Act as the voice of the Design Studio with senior leadership, business, technology teams and vendors.

• Turn complex design and AI topics into clear business stories: problem, user need, rationale, impact and

recommendation.

• Influence decisions, align competing priorities and challenge requirements constructively.

6. Cross-Team & External Design Governance

• Establish a federated model so internal, project and vendor design teams follow common standards.

• Run onboarding, design reviews and audits for work produced outside the Studio, and prevent parallel design

systems.

Requirements

• MUST: Proven corporate / large-enterprise experience, working within complex organizational structures,

governance processes and senior stakeholder environments.

• 12+ years in UX/UI, Product or Experience Design, including 5+ years leading multidisciplinary design teams.

• Experience leading a large or distributed design organization and establishing a DesignOps operating model.

• Strong hands-on Figma Enterprise expertise (libraries, variables, permissions, Dev Mode, governance).

• Proven experience building or governing an enterprise-scale design system / DLS.

• Practical experience running AI-assisted design workflows in production, not only POCs.

• Strong design-to-development collaboration with engineering teams.

• Exceptional executive presentation, storytelling and stakeholder-management skills.

Leadership Profile

• Design Leader: credible direction across UX, UI and product design.

• People Leader: builds and grows a large multidisciplinary team.

• DesignOps Leader: turns people, process, Figma and DLS into one operating model.

• AI Design Leader: makes AI part of daily delivery, with measurable value.

• Storyteller & Influencer: simplifies complex problems and wins senior alignment.

What Success Looks Like

• Clear roles, processes and standards, with work allocated by capability and capacity.

• A structured, governed and scalable Figma environment and a widely adopted DLS.

• Internal and external design teams working to common standards.

• AI embedded in day-to-day design delivery with measurable results.

• The Design Studio recognized by senior stakeholders as a strategic capability.