Associate Design Director, Product at AKQA

At AKQA Amsterdam, we use creativity to help brands and businesses move forward, from stories and identities to products, services and experiences. We follow the idea wherever it takes us, bringing different people and disciplines together to make it real.

As an Associate Design Director, you help shape how brands come to life through digital experiences. You combine strong design thinking with exceptional digital craft, turning ideas into interfaces, interactions and systems that feel intuitive, distinctive and unmistakably part of the brand. Your depth is digital, but you understand brand, UX, motion, behaviour and technology, and work closely with experience and service designers to make the work stronger.

You design by doing. You’re as comfortable shaping an experience as you are getting into Figma, building a prototype or defining a design system. You use AI naturally to explore possibilities, improve how you work and make the systems you create more effective. Working closely with our Design Director and Creative Director, you bring a distinct point of view to the studio, raise the craft of the work and help the designers around you grow.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

• Lead the digital craft. Establish and own the design direction across digital products, services and experiences, bringing exceptional UI and digital craft from early thinking through design, prototyping and implementation.
• Shape the experience. Contribute strong ideas to products, services and experiences, helping turn brand, business and human needs into something useful, distinctive and compelling.
• Bring brands to life. Translate what makes a brand distinctive into interfaces, interactions, motion, behaviours and systems, ensuring the experience is as considered as the identity behind it.
• Design by doing. Work hands-on in Figma and contemporary prototyping tools, making things early and often to explore ideas, test interactions and show what an experience could become.
• Understand the experience. Bring a strong understanding of UX and human-centred design, working closely with experience and service designers to challenge assumptions, shape journeys and connect creative ambition with how something needs to work.
• Build smarter systems. Create and evolve scalable, brand-led design systems, using components, tokens, automation and AI to make them more coherent, adaptable and efficient to use.
• Use technology creatively. Make AI a natural part of your workflow and actively explore emerging technologies, using them to generate, prototype, test and uncover new possibilities for the work.
• Lead together. Bring designers, creatives, strategists, experience designers and technologists around a clear vision, knowing when to lead, when to challenge and when another discipline should take the work further.
• Raise the standard. Take responsibility for design quality from first thought through implementation, staying close to the work while mentoring more junior designers through feedback, collaboration and example.

QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

• A digital craftsperson. You have an exceptional eye for interface design and a deep understanding of the typography, interaction, motion and details that make digital experiences feel intuitive and distinctive.
• A strong design thinker. You can contribute to the idea as well as its expression, understanding the bigger opportunity behind the thing you’re designing.
• A maker at heart. You stay close to the tools and would rather make something tangible than spend too long describing it. Figma is second nature, and prototyping is part of how you think.
• A systems thinker. You can move between an individual interaction, the journey around it and the larger system behind it, understanding how each affects the experience as a whole.
• A generous sparring partner. You understand UX and experience design well enough to ask good questions, challenge thinking and make the work stronger without needing to be the expert in every discipline.
• Technically curious. You understand enough about technology to see possibilities in it, work closely with the people building the experience and experiment when you want to know whether something can work.
• AI-native in your approach. You actively use AI to make your process and output better, while remaining curious about how intelligence itself can become part of the products, experiences and systems you design.
• Versatile by nature. Digital is your depth, not your boundary. You can contribute across brand, product, service and experience and understand how they connect.
• High standards, low ego. You care deeply about quality, communicate your thinking clearly, invite other perspectives and invest time in helping less experienced designers become better.