Head of Product Design - n8n

About n8n

n8n is the open workflow orchestration platform built for the new era of AI. We give technical teams the freedom of code with the speed of no-code, so they can automate faster, smarter, and without limits. Backed by a fiercely inventive community and 500+ builder-approved integrations, we’re changing the way people bring systems together and scale ideas for impact.

Since our founding in 2019, we’ve grown into a diverse team of over 260 - working across Europe and the US, connected by a shared builder spirit and with our centre of gravity in Berlin. Along the way, we’ve:

• Cultivated a community of more than 650,000 active developers and builders
• Earned 190K+ GitHub stars, making us one of the world’s Top 40 most popular projects
• Backed by top investors, from Sequoia’s first German seed to our SAP's recent strategic investment - bringing us to a $5.2bn valuation

That’s the company we’ve built. Now we’d love to see what you can build. If you’re applying, try n8n out - whether you’re technical or not - and share a screenshot of your first workflow with us. The easiest place to start is here: app.n8n.cloud/register.

n8n sits at one of the most interesting UX problems in software right now: more than 80% of workflows built on n8n today involve AI agents, and the platform is in the middle of a deliberate expansion from deeply technical developers toward a broader set of builders. That tension, keeping power users happy while dramatically lowering the floor, is the central design challenge.

This is a foundational hire with a real mandate and direct exec partnership.

What you'll do

Own the quality bar

• Set a clear, consistent quality bar that the team can orient around and build toward, so great work becomes the natural output of how we design together.
• Build review processes and critique rituals that give the team a shared language for quality and the confidence to make strong craft decisions together.
• Evolve the design system and QA practices so the bar rises as the team grows.
• Dig into one of the most genuinely interesting UX challenges in the space: n8n has historically had a steep learning curve for new users. Your job is to lower that floor without losing the power that experienced builders love.

Drive design's strategic influence

• Shape product strategy, not just respond to it. Bring design thinking into roadmap conversations and help surface user problems before they become someone else's brief.
• Help lead n8n's expansion toward a broader, less technical audience, a deliberate and exciting strategic shift that design should be leading.
• Build the kind of relationships with Product, Engineering, and leadership where design is a genuine thought partner at every stage.

Build and grow the team

• Lead a team of around 14 designers today: 2 Design Leads each working with ~6 ICs, plus Design Engineering and UX Research (with more hires ahead).
• Shape the team structure, career framework, and progression paths so people know where they stand and where they're going.
• Create a culture of high standards and honest feedback, where people feel supported to do their best work and have a clear sense of what great looks like.
• Own hiring and headcount planning for the department, and help us grow without losing what makes the team good.

Build research into how we make decisions

• Establish a pragmatic, continuous research practice from the ground up. We're making our first dedicated UX research hires, so there's real room to shape this.
• Make customer insight, product data, and community feedback a live input to product decisions, so teams are building from evidence at every step.
• Connect research to the decisions that matter most: activation, adoption, retention, and helping new users find their way into n8n with confidence.

Help the team work in new ways

• Champion practical AI adoption inside the design org, from prototyping and research synthesis to design QA and workflow efficiency.
• Help the team stay curious and current as the tools, patterns, and expectations around AI products continue to evolve fast.
• Model the kind of working style you want to see: thoughtful, adaptive, and genuinely excited about what's changing.

Requirements

Must-haves

• Product design leadership: You have managed managers, coached senior designers, and built design teams that improve both craft and business outcomes, including making hard performance calls when needed.
• Complex product systems experience: You have led design across complex or developer-facing products where UX quality depends on deep product understanding.
• Craft authority: You are a quality bar, not just someone who appreciates quality. You can identify great work, explain why it's great, and hold the line on standards even when it's uncomfortable.
• Strategic influence, not just strategic thinking: You have made design a co-equal in product conversations, not a downstream function. You know how to bring people with you, create debate, and drive decisions.
• Structured problem-solving under ambiguity: You find your way into unclear problems and create a plan. You don't just ask good questions, you answer them. You move forward when there's no map.
• AI-era product judgment: You understand the AI, automation, or adjacent tooling landscape and can turn emerging patterns into usable, trustworthy product experiences.
• Research literacy: You know how to build research into product development so insight becomes part of how teams make decisions, not a separate artifact.
• Data-informed decision making: You use product analytics, research, and customer evidence to guide decisions instead of relying on taste or opinion alone.
• Org design and performance management: You can design team structures, define career paths, raise expectations, and handle difficult performance conversations with clarity.

Nice-to-haves

• Open-source or community product experience: You have worked on open-source, fair-code, community-led, or builder-driven products and understand what it means to design for a community that has strong opinions.
• Design engineering credibility: You have enough front-end or design engineering fluency to partner deeply on design system adoption and implementation quality.
• Remote-first operating systems: You have built design rituals, critique, QA, and collaboration practices that work across distributed teams and time zones.
• Growth surface experience: You have worked on activation, onboarding, templates, time-to-value, or product-led growth surfaces.
• Rising Design Manager profile: We are open to someone who has been an exceptional Design Manager and is ready for their first Head-level role, if the fundamentals are exceptional.

We can sponsor visas to Germany; for any other country, you need to have existing right to work.

Our company language is English.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation 💸 – We offer fair and attractive pay.
• Ownership 💪 – Our core value is to “empower others,” and we mean it—you’ll get a slice of n8n with equity.
• Work/life balance 🏖️ – We work hard but ensure you have time to recharge:
  • Europe: 30 days of vacation, plus public holidays wherever you are.
  • US: 20 vacation days, 8 sick days, plus public holidays wherever you are.
• Health & wellness 🩺 –
  • Europe: We provide benefits according to local country norms.
  • US: Multiple low-premium, low-deductible medical plans with coverage for individuals and families—plus a no-cost premium HDHP option with a pre-seeded HSA—along with dental and vision coverage.
• Future planning 💰 –
  • Europe: We provide pension contributions according to local country norms.
  • US: 401(k) retirement plan with a 4% employer match.
• Financial security 🛡️ –
  • Europe: We provide benefits according to local country norms.
  • US: Company-paid short-term and long-term disability insurance, plus life insurance to support you and your loved ones.
• Career growth 📈 – We hire rising stars who grow with us! You’ll get €1K (or equivalent) per year to spend on courses, books, events, or coaching to level up your skills.
• A passionate team 🤩 – We love our product, and we prove it with regular hackathons where we see who can build the coolest thing with it!
• Remote-first 🌏 – Our team works remotely across Europe, with regular off-sites for team bonding.
• Giving back 🤝 – We're big fans of open source, and you'll get $100 per month to support projects you care about.
• Transparency 🙏 – We all know what everyone’s working on, how the company is doing—the whole shebang.