Lead Product Designer

About Kernel
Kernel is one of New Zealand's fastest growing fintechs, helping Kiwis build long term wealth through KiwiSaver, managed funds, savings products and investing. We're looking for a Lead Product Designer to lead our design practice while remaining hands on in solving complex product challenges. This is a true player-coach role, combining leadership of a small design team with ownership of high impact product work.

The Opportunity
Reporting to the Chief Product Officer, you'll lead a team of 2-3 Product Designers and work closely with Product, Engineering and Marketing. You'll drive design quality across our web and mobile experiences, evolve our design system, coach designers, and help shape how design contributes to product strategy and customer outcomes. You'll also help us explore how AI can improve both our design process and the products we build.

What You'll Do

• Lead, coach and develop a small team of Product Designers.

• Stay hands on, designing some of Kernel's most important product experiences.

• Drive consistency and quality across web and mobile.

• Own and evolve our design system.

• Partner closely with Product and Engineering from discovery through to delivery.

• Use customer insight, data and product thinking to inform decisions.

• Help establish AI-enabled design practices across the team.

• Strong experience designing customer facing digital products.

• Experience leading or mentoring designers.

• Expertise working with design systems.

• Excellent product and design judgement.

• Strong Figma and prototyping skills.

• A collaborative approach and ability to influence across teams.

• Confidence using AI tools within your workflow.

• Fintech, financial services or other regulated industry experience.

• Strong visual design capability.

• Brand, marketing or accessibility design experience.

• Experience designing AI-powered products.

• Lead design in a growing fintech where design has genuine influence.

• Shape a team and design practice as the business scales.

• Build products that help Kiwis grow their wealth.

• Flexible hybrid working (minimum three days in the office).

• Health insurance, parental leave top-up and professional development support.