Overview
Lead Product Designer Jobs in San Francisco, CA at Clera
Title: Lead Product Designer
Company: Clera
Location: San Francisco, CA
About The Role
We're a fast-growing, angel-funded B2B SaaS startup building AI-powered communication tools for thousands of European business customers — including professional services firms, medical practices, and tradespeople. Our product automates and enhances how businesses handle calls and customer communication around the clock.
We're looking for an experienced, hands-on Lead Product Designer to own Design, Branding, and Design Team leadership. You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with founders and engineers, set the design standard across product and brand, and ship at high velocity with direct access to real customers. This is a rare opportunity to define and scale design at a pivotal growth stage.
What You'll Do
- Take full ownership of product design, branding, and the design team — roughly a 50/50 split between individual contributor craft and team leadership.
- Lead hands-on product design across three product areas, maintaining consistency and quality throughout.
- Conduct regular customer interviews with end-users (e.g. tradespeople, doctors, professional service providers) and translate insights directly into design decisions.
- Define, build, and maintain a scalable design system across product, web, and brand.
- Own and evolve the brand identity, including website design and visual language.
- Lead and mentor the design team, spanning website, branding, and product design workstreams.
- Collaborate closely with founders and engineering in tight feedback loops for rapid decision-making and daily releases.
- Set and uphold design standards — measuring design decisions with analytics and iterating data-driven.
- Leverage AI-first tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude, v0) to accelerate prototyping and design workflows.
What We're Looking For
Must-haves:
- Native German speaker (DACH market focus) with good English for an international team — this is a dealbreaker requirement.
- 5+ years of end-to-end product design experience with ownership of multiple product areas.
- Demonstrated leadership experience managing or mentoring designers — or a strong, clear intent to step into that responsibility.
- Proven ability to own branding, website, and product design simultaneously while setting and maintaining design standards.
- Strong analytics-driven mindset: you measure design decisions and iterate based on data, not just intuition.
- Experience conducting customer interviews and integrating user research into design outcomes.
- Hands-on proficiency with Figma, prototyping, and design systems at scale.
- Experience working with AI tools to accelerate design and prototyping workflows.
Nice-to-haves:
- Domain experience in B2B software, professional services, or CRM-like environments.
- Experience building and maintaining a design system across multiple product areas at significant scale.
- Background at B2B SaaS, AI, or communication-focused companies.
Compensation & Benefits
- Salary: $80,000 – $150,000 annually (depending on experience)
- High autonomy and direct influence on product direction
- Close collaboration with founders and a small, high-calibre team
- Significant room to shape design culture, processes, and standards from the ground up
- Visa sponsorship: Not available
Location
This is an on-site role based in Vienna, Austria. You'll be working in-person with the core team at our Vienna office. Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to Vienna.
