Head of Design

Feb 17

Client: Backlight
Location: Stockholm, Nice or London
Work style: Hybrid, full-time

About Backlight

Backlight is a global media technology company shaping the future of how creative teams produce, manage, and distribute content.

Through its portfolio of products—including Iconik, Ftrack, Celtx, Zype, and Wildmoka—Backlight empowers creators, studios, and broadcasters such as NBC and BBC to bring stories to life from concept to screen.

Backlight has brought together some of the most respected creative tools in the industry into one ecosystem serving the full media lifecycle.

The Opportunity

We are hiring a Head of Design to lead design across a core part of Backlight’s product portfolio and help shape the next phase of growth.

This is a hands-on player-coach role. You will:

Shape the Product & Platform strategy, as a core contributor to the Product and Technology leadership team
Set the design vision and raise the quality bar
Partner deeply with Product and Engineering
Scale a small senior team responsibly
Stay close enough to the work to influence key flows and experience decisions

Team & Environment

Current team: 2 highly experienced designers (Stockholm-based), with plans to grow.
Engineering presence: strong development team in Sophia Antipolis (France)
Culture: high output, high ownership, fast-moving

We are looking for someone who thrives in environments where they must:

Make decisions with imperfect information
Bring structure without slowing momentum
Translate complexity into clarity

This is not a heavily layered design org. It is a tight, high-trust group that needs leadership to scale.

What You’ll Do

Design Leadership & Strategy

Define and evolve the design direction for Iconik and Wildmoka
Align design execution with product strategy and engineering capability
Shape how Iconik and Wildmoka expands into new customer segments and use cases
Drive cross-functional collaboration across “tribes” as the organisation grows

Player-Coach Craft

Maintain a high craft bar in complex B2B workflows
Simplify powerful systems without dumbing them down
Contribute directly to critical UX, interaction, and structural design work

Team & Operating Model

Coach and develop a small, senior design team
Introduce scalable rituals, prioritisation clarity, and feedback loops
Partner closely with Senior Leadership across Backlight to ensure high-quality implementation

What We’re Looking For

Essential

Senior product design leadership experience in B2B SaaS environments
Experience working on complex, systems-driven products (workflow tools, systems of record, platforms)
Ability to operate as a player-coach
Comfort leading in scrappy, under-documented, high-ambiguity environments
Comfortable working in a modern, iterative product environment (prototyping, testing, continuous refinement)
Strong cross-functional collaboration with Product and Engineering

Strong Plus

Exposure to high-craft, opinionated tools (e.g. Linear, Attio, etc.)
Familiarity with video, media, or creative workflows (industry experience not required, but affinity helps)
Experience scaling small teams through inflection points