Lead Product Designer

Who are we?

Transcenda, headquartered in the US, was founded in July 2019 and is a full-lifecycle product development company. With locations throughout Romania, Poland, Ukraine, and Brazil, Transcenda works with Fortune 500 companies and well-funded startups to help bring new products to life.

Transcenda helps companies ideate new product concepts, build prototypes, design world-class solutions then engineer new commercial products. Transcenda puts people first and strives to be a changemaker by building a better world through technology. Transcenda has grown from a 5-person team to over 250 people over the past four years and plans to continue growing.

About the role

This is a senior, consultancy-style design role. You'll move between leading projects end-to-end — driving discovery, aligning stakeholders, shaping direction — and rolling up your sleeves as a senior-level individual contributor when that's what the work needs.

You'll be working on mature, live products where the bar is improving what exists: smoothing workflows, sharpening hierarchy, lifting conversion, and removing friction. This is not a greenfield, portfolio-piece role. If you get satisfaction from making a working product noticeably better for the people who use it every day, you'll like it here.

Key responsibilities

• Take ownership of design problems on assigned projects — frame the problem, drive it through discovery, design, and delivery, and bring stakeholders along the whole way.
• Lead or contribute on a project depending on what's needed — sometimes you're directing the design effort, sometimes you're the one in Figma producing the work. Both modes should feel comfortable.
• Partner closely with product managers and engineers, translating ambiguous requirements into concrete, testable design solutions and iterating against live implementations.
• Run the iterative cycle from low-fidelity exploration through high-fidelity delivery, with usability validation at the points where it actually changes the outcome.
• Facilitate workshops, design reviews, and working sessions with cross-functional and executive stakeholders. Make decisions visible and trade-offs explicit.
• Mentor and raise the bar for designers around you.
• Build durable relationships with stakeholders. Understand what they're actually trying to achieve and push back constructively when the brief is wrong.

Must haves

• 6–10+ years of UX/Product Design experience, ideally including time in a consultancy, agency, or embedded-team setting where you've owned client or stakeholder relationships directly.
• Demonstrated ability to flex between leading a project (or a small team) and contributing as a senior IC, depending on what the engagement needs.
• Track record of improving existing products rather than designing greenfield experiences — measurable wins on usability, conversion, or workflow efficiency.
• Strong visual and UI judgment for forms, workflows, CTAs, hierarchy, and layout. You can defend a layout decision on the merits.
• Comfort working closely with engineering against live implementations — you can read a real interface and tell us what's wrong with it before opening Figma.
• Ability to articulate why a design decision was made and what problem it solves, to audiences ranging from engineers to executives.
• Experience facilitating cross-functional workshops and leading business reviews or strategic planning sessions with senior stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Background designing for regulated or enterprise domains (finance, compliance, GRC, banking, or similar).
• Experience designing software embedded inside third-party platforms.
• Familiarity with mature component libraries and design systems (MUI or similar).
• Experience mentoring or leveling up other designers through example and critique.
• Working knowledge of HTML/CSS; JavaScript a plus.
• Degree in Design, HCI, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent experience.