Lead Product Designer
OUR MISSION
To become the car-changing destination of choice. By combining technology, media and deep automotive expertise, we've turned how people buy, sell, advertise and lease cars on its head.
What started as a simple reviews site is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe. Last year alone we grew over 50% with nearly £3bn worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8bn of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.
In 2024 we went big and acquired Autovia - creators of AutoExpress and Evo magazines - doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with almost 10m subscribers and over 1.1 billion annual views, while we sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350million.
And we’re a long way from done!
THE ROLE
We're looking for a Lead/Staff Product Designer to shape some of the most important experiences in our marketplace. You'll own complex, high-impact problem spaces end to end, from ambiguous discovery through to shipped, measured outcomes and raise the bar for design craft and pace across the whole team.
This is a senior individual-contributor role with real influence. You'll partner directly with product and engineering leadership, mentor other designers, and set the standard for how design work gets done at Carwow.
A note on how we work: AI fluency is integral to the role. Our design team works AI-natively. We use Claude Design (and similar tools) to move from idea to high-quality prototype in hours, not weeks, and we expect designers at this level to be genuinely fluent in this way of working, not just curious about it. If you're still designing the way teams did in 2023, this probably isn't the right role. If you've rebuilt your workflow around AI and it's made you dramatically faster and more ambitious, we'd love to talk.
WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING
Own end-to-end design for a major problem space in our marketplace. Buying, selling, or dealer-facing products. from discovery and framing through to launch and iteration
Prototype at pace using AI design tools (Claude Design or equivalent), getting real, testable experiences in front of users and stakeholders early and often
Work shoulder-to-shoulder with engineers, using AI-assisted workflows to close the gap between design intent and shipped product, ideally getting hands-on in code where it speeds things up
Set direction, not just execute: identify opportunities, make the case with evidence, and bring product and engineering partners with you
Raise the craft bar across the team through critique, mentorship, and by making your own work an example worth following
Champion AI-native ways of working. Sharing techniques, building reusable prompts and workflows, and helping the wider team level up
Ground decisions in evidence, combining user research, data, and rapid experimentation
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
7+ years of product design experience, with a track record of leading complex, high-impact work in consumer or marketplace products
A high degree of AI fluency. Hands-on, demonstrable experience using Claude Design (or an equivalent AI design/prototyping tool) as a core part of your workflow. This is critical to the role, and we'll want to see it in your portfolio and hear about it in interviews
Strong end-to-end craft: you can go from a fuzzy problem statement to polished, production-ready design, and everything you ship is considered
Comfort with ambiguity and pace. You make good decisions with incomplete information and iterate quickly
Excellent communication and influence: you can align senior stakeholders, tell a compelling story with your work, and hold your ground constructively
Experience mentoring designers and lifting the standard of a team|
STRONGLY PREFERRED SKILLS
Experience with Claude Code (or an equivalent AI coding agent) — enough to prototype in real code, collaborate more deeply with engineers, or ship small changes yourself
Marketplace, e-commerce, or two-sided platform experience
Familiarity with experimentation-driven product development (A/B testing, funnel analysis)
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
In your first six months you'll have taken ownership of a significant problem space, shipped work that measurably moves a core metric, and become someone other designers seek out — both for the quality of your craft and for how you use AI tools to work at a pace and ambition level others want to copy.
WHY CARWOW?
Genuine scale and impact: your work is used by millions of car buyers and sellers
An AI-forward culture where new tools and workflows are embraced, not resisted — with access to the best tooling available
A senior, supportive design team that takes craft seriously
Hybrid working, competitive salary and equity, private healthcare, enhanced parental leave, and a car-buying perk you'd expect from us
HOW TO APPLY
Send us your CV and portfolio. Please include at least one example of work where AI tools (Claude Design, Claude Code, or equivalents) played a meaningful role in your process — tell us what you used, how, and what it changed about the outcome.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU
Hybrid working
Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali
Matched pension contributions for a peaceful retirement
Share options - when we thrive, so do you!
Vitality Private Healthcare, for peace of mind, plus eyecare vouchers
Life Assurance for (even more) peace of mind
Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner
Enhanced holiday package, plus Bank Holidays
28 days annual leave
1 day for your wedding
1 day off when you move house - because moving is hard enough without work!
For your third year anniversary, get 30 days of annual leave per year
For your tenth year anniversary, get 35 days of annual leave per year
Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year
Work from abroad for a month
Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies
Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees for little ones
The latest tech (Macbook or Surface) to power your gif-sending talents
Up to £500/€550 home office allowance for that massage chair you’ve been talking about
Generous learning and development budget to help you master your craft
Regular social events: tech lunches, coffee with the exec sessions, lunch 8 learns, book clubs, social events/anything else you pester us for
Refer a friend, get paid. Repeat for infinite money
Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.
