Head of Design

About the role

You will report directly to the CTO and work alongside engineering, product, legal engineering and AI from the start. Your direct team is small today, three designers, and you will shape how it grows from here. Your starting point is not a design backlog handed to you in advance. It is the product strategy, growth ambition, and AI-first operating model, and you will use that context to set the design agenda. Orbital is at an inflection point. The product is live and trusted by some of the most demanding real estate legal professionals in the world. The challenge now is not building something from scratch but making it significantly better: cleaner, faster, and genuinely easier to trust. As the product scales across the UK and US, the design function needs to grow with it, and you will be the person who builds it.

What you'll do

Lead from the product.

Your first team is the product engineering leadership team. You will be part of product, commercial, and strategic conversations, bringing a strategic design perspective to business challenges rather than representing the design function in isolation. From there, you will form your own view on where the product experience is constraining growth, where the interface is creating friction for users, and what needs to change. You will help the leadership team pressure-test product decisions against user reality, spot where information architecture, interaction patterns, or visual clarity are becoming bottlenecks, and ensure that how we design is aligned with where the business is heading.

Set the design agenda from product context.

You will not be given a predefined project list. You will assess what you learn from the product, the users, and the business and set the design priorities from there. That means making sure areas like information architecture, interaction design, design systems, user research, and AI interface patterns are pointed at the right problems and prioritised accordingly. A major part of the brief is translating current product realities into a sharper design mandate and challenging existing assumptions when the evidence demands it.

Define what AI-native design looks like here.

The hardest design problems at Orbital are not aesthetic. They are epistemic. How do you help a real estate lawyer trust an AI output enough to put their name to it? How do you present the reasoning behind a 50-document analysis in a way that a partner can review in 20 minutes? How do you make agentic behaviour feel controllable to a professional who is accountable for the outcome? You will set the standard for how Orbital answers those questions, shape the interaction patterns that distinguish our product from everything else in the market, and hold the wider team accountable for the quality of the experience we ship.

Build the design function.

You will be the consistent presence the design team anchors around. You will invest in their growth, develop clear ownership within the function, and be accountable for the team's development over time, not just its immediate output. Over time you will shape a high-leverage design function that combines strong craft, deep user understanding, and a genuine instinct for where AI changes the rules.

Requirements

The must-haves

Significant experience leading product design at a senior level at a scaling B2B tech company. You bring real depth across the design discipline. That foundation is essential, but what sets you apart is the ability to operate beyond it.

A track record of sitting at the product leadership table and influencing business decisions, not just delivering a design agenda within one.

Experience scaling a design function through a high-growth phase, with the judgment to know what process and structure matters at each stage of maturity.

A history of owning the design strategy for a complex B2B product and seeing it through from discovery to delivery and post-launch validation.

Comfort working in a fast-moving AI environment where requirements evolve quickly and ambiguity is the default.

Strong written and verbal communication skills to articulate design rationale to both practitioners and executives.

A collaborative mindset that enables you to influence without authority and partner closely with engineering, product management, and legal subject matter experts.

An understanding of the constraints and workflows of professional legal environments and the implications for design, risk, and compliance.

A commitment to evidence-based design, using research and data to drive decisions and demonstrate impact.

Nice to have

Experience in regulated industries or sectors where trust, safety, and legal compliance are paramount.

Background in AI products or tools that augment expert workflows, and a portfolio that demonstrates thoughtful prompts for design outcomes.

Practical notes

This role is based in London and is a full-time position. The hours are standard business hours with flexibility for deep work sessions as needed. Travel is primarily within the UK and US for user research and stakeholder meetings. Candidates must be eligible to work in the UK without sponsorship at this time. The role reports to the CTO and is part of a small, cross-functional team driving product and design strategy.