Director of Product Design
Knak
Product, Design
Ottawa, ON, Canada
Knak is a mission-driven company
Why? Because our time is limited, our competition is fierce, and our margin for error is small. For us to have the greatest impact on the world, we need to be laser focused on our core mission, which is...
Empowering people to be creative.
That’s why Knak exists.
We are a world-class enterprise email and landing page creation platform with a focus on making successful and happy customers by providing them with an incredibly powerful, yet easy to use creation platform.
Our industry leading SaaS solution is built by Marketers, for Marketers. We know that it’s the small things that make the biggest impact and that emails and landing pages are where the rubber hits the road when it comes to Marketing Automation. We change the way Marketers work by making them more efficient, while improving conversion rate of their campaigns and helping them stay on brand.
Oh, and we have a bit of fun while doing it, too!
The Role: Director, Product Design
As Director of Product Design, you'll set the strategic design vision for our organization while building and leading a high-performing design team, with an initial focus on strengthening our Product Design capabilities at Knak.
You'll champion design excellence across all product teams, drive organizational design maturity, and ensure user-centric thinking is embedded throughout the company.
This strategic leadership role requires exceptional design judgment, strong business acumen, and the ability to influence and inspire teams at all levels.
What You’ll Do
Define and drive Knak’s design vision and UX strategy
- Partner with executive and product leadership to align design direction with business goals, user needs, and emerging opportunities in AI
Explore and guide AI-driven product experiences
- Help define how AI enhances our platform and lead the design approach for intelligent, user-centered features
Champion AI adoption in the design process
- Drive the team to integrate AI-native tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Lovable into everyday design workflows — from ideation through prototyping
Lead, mentor, and grow the product design team
- Build a high-performing, inclusive team by developing talent, supporting growth, and fostering a culture of creativity and accountability
Oversee execution of design across product teams
- Ensure consistent, high-quality output through critiques, reviews, and alignment with design systems and accessibility standards
Partner deeply with engineering
-Establish shared workflows and regular collaboration rhythms with engineering to ensure design intent translates cleanly into the shipped product
Establish and evolve Knak’s design system
- Drive scalable component development and close collaboration with engineering to improve speed and consistency
Set and maintain a high bar for visual and interaction design
- Own the standard for UI polish, visual consistency, and attention to detail across every product surface
Champion user research and usability testing
- Integrate qualitative and quantitative insights into the design process to validate decisions and improve outcomes
Advocate for design across the organization
- Represent design at the leadership table and influence product strategy through a strong, credible point of view
Lead cross-functional collaboration and alignment
-Facilitate workshops, design reviews, and working sessions that bring product, engineering, and marketing together to solve problems and drive clarity=
Champion design maturity across the organization
- Embed user-centric practices and design thinking across departments, fostering cultural change at every level
What You Bring
- 8+ years of experience in product design, including 3+ years leading and developing designers
- Proven people leadership with a track record of growing and mentoring high-performing teams
- Strong strategic thinking—able to connect design decisions to business outcomes and influence product roadmaps
- Experience designing enterprise B2B or SaaS products, with an understanding of complex workflows
- AI fluency—comfortable shaping design approaches for AI-powered features and understanding their impact on user experience
- Experience using AI-native prototyping tools like Claude Code (preferred), Lovable, Figma Make or Cursor to go from design concept to working prototype
- Expertise with traditional design tools such as Figma
- Deep knowledge of UX best practices, accessibility, and modern product development
- A strong portfolio demonstrating visual design excellence — you sweat the details and it shows in pixel-level polish and craft
- Experience establishing user research practices and integrating qualitative and quantitative insights into product decisions
- Expertise with Figma and prototyping workflows
- Experience defining design operations — including workflows, tooling, and resource allocation — to help a team deliver high-quality work consistently
- Strong cross-functional collaboration skills and credibility with product, engineering, and go-to-market teams
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to advocate for design without creating friction
Bonus Points If You Have
- Experience building or scaling a design system
- Background in marketing technology, email marketing, or creative production tools
- Experience with rapid growth or scaling organizations
- Experience scaling a design team through periods of rapid organizational growth
What We Offer
At Knak we have four foundational pillars. Culture, customers, product and growth. Culture is our number one pillar because we know that is at the core of building a strong company that can build amazing products and delight our customers. We do this with a laser focus on hiring the right people who are smart, positive and who want more than the typical nine-to-five offers.
We offer an extremely rewarding, second to none work environment as acknowledged by Ottawa’s Best Places to Work 2025! We show our investment in our people through our competitive salaries, equity in the company, great benefits, paid vacation, Life leave days (because life happens), team lunches and off-sites, and most importantly our commitment to YOUR career growth.
If this sounds like something you’re looking for, then we’d love to hear from you!
If you don’t see yourself fully reflected in every job requirement listed on the posting above, we still encourage you to reach out and apply. Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups often only apply when they feel 100% qualified. We strongly encourage applicants of all genders, ages, ethnicities, cultures, abilities, sexual orientations, and life experiences to apply. Knak believes in creating an inclusive, barrier-free working environment. If you require ANY accommodation to the interview process please contact culture@knak.com.
At Knak, our recruitment process includes AI screening for keywords and minimum qualifications as well as video interviews which are transcribed with AI. Humans are still at the core of our decision making!
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