Director of Product Design

Location The product team highly values in‑person interactions to foster a culture of collaboration, and it provides the opportunity for the team to build strong relationships. The successful candidate for this role must be able to work from either the Sydney office or Melbourne office a few days a week (our product team comes to the office at least one day per week).

Job Description About us: When it comes to food experience, me&u helps you always feel like a local. The company’s vision is to bring that feeling to everyone, anywhere – so no matter what neighbourhood you live in or visit, you’ll always know the perfect place to go and exactly what to order. me&u is used by 6000+ bars, pubs, and restaurants to create memorable guest experiences and grow their brands. With 200 staff in five countries and headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, me&u is the consolidation of two leading hospitality technology companies: Mr Yum and me&u, who merged in November 2023.

About the role: Elevate product design as a first‑class, strategic function at me&u. This role leads the product design team, sets the bar for craft and customer experience, and shapes product strategy through strong UX thinking and commercial judgement. You won’t just deliver on a roadmap. You’ll influence what goes on it. This is a player‑coach role. Roughly two‑thirds of your time will be spent on strategy, cross‑stream execution excellence, and team leadership. The remaining third is hands‑on problem solving within a product stream, leading from the front and modelling what being a great product maker looks like. You’ll own design strategy as a function, drive cross‑stream coherence, and be a voice in product strategy and leadership forums.

What You’ll Do Lead the function

Define and evolve the product design vision, strategy, and operating model at me&u.

Be a key voice in product leadership: shaping what we build, why, and how design drives commercial outcomes.

Own product design coherence, ensuring the product experience feels intentional and connected across all surfaces (venues and guests).

Design, build and evolve how design work flows through the streams by leveraging scalable workflows with humans, AI tools and automation each playing the right role to create impact.

Clearly demonstrate the value of design investment through commercial and craft outcomes which deliver both commercially as well as design standards and craft.

Lead from the front (player‑coach)

Hire, manage, mentor, and grow a team of exceptional product designers across multiple levels and streams.

Create a high‑performance design culture built on craft, curiosity and accountability.

Contribute directly to a product stream as an embedded designer. Use this to stay close to the product, the users and the craft while also demonstrating what great discovery and delivery looks like.

Drive design excellence

Establish clear quality standards, design principles, and review practices that raise the bar across all streams.

Lead the strategy for the use of behavioural data, user research, product analytics, and AI to ensure design decisions are grounded in continuous, data‑informed experience improvement across venues and guests.

Continue to evolve the design system alongside engineering, ensuring it scales across products and platforms.

Champion accessibility, usability, and inclusive design as non‑negotiables.

Push the boundaries of design with AI

Lead a transformation of how product design works at me&u. Redesign the operating model so that humans, AI tools, and automation each play defined roles, and the whole system produces better outcomes than any one part could alone. We want to be the team that figures this out, not the team that reads about it later.

Partner with product and engineering to design AI‑powered product experiences that are trustworthy, useful, and human‑centred.

Have a genuine, well‑formed point of view on where the product design discipline is heading in an AI‑first world, and the conviction to lead your team there.

What You’ll Bring Must-haves

10+ years of product design experience, with at least 3 years in a design leadership role (leading designers, not just projects).

Proven experience elevating product design as a function within a scale‑up or high‑growth technology company.

Background at a recognised Australian or international scale‑up with a reputation for strong product and design culture.

Able to demonstrate strong evidence of strategic UX thinking, systems‑level design, and real commercial impact.

Strong commercial instinct: you understand how design drives retention, conversion, adoption, and revenue, and you can articulate it.

Great visual design taste. Also setting the bar for what modern innovation looks like.

Experience building, mentoring, and retaining high‑performing design teams.

A genuine, demonstrated embrace of AI in the design process. You should be actively using AI tools today and thinking seriously about how they reshape the discipline.

Excellent communication skills: you can frame complex trade‑offs clearly, influence senior stakeholders, and bring people along.

Strong preferences

Experience in B2B SaaS, ideally with B2C or marketplace exposure as well. Multi‑persona, multi‑surface product environments are a strong plus.

A connection to or curiosity about hospitality.

WHY ME&U Work with impact and purpose.

We’re helping the hospitality and entertainment industries to thrive and me&u is at the forefront of this. Expect collaboration and interesting problems to solve.

Work with great people.

Work alongside a supportive, diverse and inclusive team. You’ll have the trust, freedom and support to experiment and not be afraid of failure but to learn from it…and have fun together along the way.

Work that challenges you.

We’re growing quickly, and you will too. You’ll have numerous opportunities to embrace discomfort, grow and learn as me&u expands and scales globally.

Work that works for you.

We’re a flexible, remote‑friendly place with inclusive leave options and day‑to‑day work times to suit your routine. We prioritise our team’s mental health & overall wellbeing, with access to mental health days and support programs.

Diversity and Inclusion Commitment We’re committed to growing and empowering an inclusive me&u community. That’s why we actively encourage applications from candidates from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. If you require accessibility assistance at any stage of the process, please let us know.

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