A specialist design employment agency for product and UX teams
Based in London, we place senior product and UX designers across the UK, US, and Europe.
Why product and UX design is a specialist hire
Good Maven's decades of international recruitment experience and large network of over 50,000 connections enable us to engage right-fit candidates, when other recruiters can't.
Our scope includes hiring talent at all levels, from junior to senior and executive leadership positions; across pre-seed startups like Slashwork and Metaview, seed-stage companies like Paid, Series C scale-ups like Wayflyer, Sanity, and n8n, and global public companies like Monday and Wise.
This depth of expertise means:
If you're a global company that needs to hire across multiple regions, you only need one recruitment partner.
If you're a startup or mid-sized company, you'll get access to a global pool of talent typically reserved for larger companies.
Hiring senior product designers
Senior product design is one of the most specialist hires a technology company can make. At this level, you're not just evaluating craft, you're assessing systems thinking, cross-functional influence, and whether someone can own the design function, not just contribute to it.
Most recruitment agencies treat product designers as a subset of general creative hiring. We don't. Good Maven was built specifically to place senior product designers at technology companies: across startups, scale-ups, and global organisations. We've hired Founding Designers, built out entire teams, placed senior leaders at companies like Monday and Super, and hired into specialist contexts including highly-regulated industries, complex technical products, and post-acquisition teams like The Athletic following the buy-out by the New York Times. That depth means we know what good looks like, and we know where to find it.
Recruiting design talent for
20+ years in design
recruitment
Global warm pipeline across senior & leadership talent
50,000+ global talent pool
One of the best recruitment agencies for product designers
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Fast, focused turnaround
We deliver the hire within 4-6 weeks on average. We manage interview coordination end-to-end or we can partner with your internal team.
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Design recruiters & leaders on every search
Our team has built and led world-class design and design recruitment teams, bringing deep expertise to evaluating design talent.
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Commercial terms
Fee: 30% of first-year base salary. One-third retainer to begin the search with remainder due on offer acceptance.
Replacement guarantee: If a hire isn’t the right match, we replace them, simple as that.
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Single hire to full team builds
We’ve built an active international network of designers and design leaders across the Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the UK, and west Asia. From pre-seed founding designers to full design teams at public companies, we support every stage of growth.
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Curated & custom to you
Reviewing UX and product design portfolios is time-intensive and easy to get wrong — most hiring managers see dozens of candidates before finding one worth interviewing. We do that filtering for you. Every shortlist we deliver has been assessed for craft, communication, and team fit, so your team's time is spent on real conversations, not elimination rounds.
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Retained search model
We focus on complex, specialist roles and limit the number of searches we take on. This enables senior-level attention, evaluation, and accountability through to a successful hire.
How we recruit product designers
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1. Role alignment
A focused kickoff to align on role scope, success criteria, and what “right fit” means for your team. We share an initial shortlist within 1 week to pressure-test direction, refine expectations, and confirm we’re aligned before scaling the search.
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2. Talent sifting
Sourcing, portfolio review, skills assessment, and structured screening run in parallel. Market mapping, interviewer calibration, and offer guidance. Interviews are concentrated in this window so your team can move decisively.
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3. Candidate interviews
Final interviews, decision-making, references, and offer negotiations through acceptance.
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4. Post-hire support
Includes five flexible coaching hours, usable during or after the engagement, as well as a free replacement during the guarantee period.
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Meet the Team
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Meg Rye
Founder & CEO
Meg is the founder of Good Maven, specialising in placing product and UX designers and leaders at global software and AI companies from pre-seed startups like Slashwork and Paid to Series C scale-ups including n8n, Sanity, Vertice, and Wayflyer, and public companies like Monday. With two decades of experience in coaching and recruiting, she brings deep expertise across the full company lifecycle. Formerly Meta's first international product and design recruiter, she's reviewed thousands of portfolios and led hiring for teams across levels and disciplines. She brings a recruiter's lens to career narrative, resume, LinkedIn, and job map so materials get found, understood, and invited into real interview conversations. -
Kelly Norris
Head of Recruitment
Kelly is Head of Recruitment at Good Maven, focused on sourcing exceptional talent and strengthening recruiting efficiency across company stages, from pre-seed startups like Slashwork and seed-stage companies like Paid, to Series C teams at Sanity, and public enterprises like AT&T. She brings over a decade of experience hiring for teams at Meta and Microsoft, including WhatsApp, Instagram, Xbox, and Reality Labs. She's known for her sharp assessment skills, cross-functional recruiting depth, and people-first approach to building high-impact teams. -
Leah Williams
Sourcing Lead
Leah is a specialist sourcer with 15+ years' experience, from sourcing for Google's Developer Relations team to talent leadership at Epic Games, Deliveroo, and early-stage startups. She's known for her research-driven sourcing craft, a knack for building hiring infrastructure from scratch, and her deep market knowledge across the US, Europe, and the UK. At Good Maven, she brings that craft to design, connecting exceptional talent with work that matters.
Beyond the hire:
Coaching that builds lasting teams
For organizations investing in long-term design excellence, we provide custom coaching for both managers and individual contributors.
Every retained search includes 5 hours of design coaching. This can be used where it creates the most value for your team, including:
Leadership development and new manager growth
Interview readiness and ongoing skill building
Structured onboarding and early performance calibration
Team development that strengthens retention and velocity
We also offer team coaching, whether you’re looking to elevate your team’s design craft, support executive leaders in growing their influence, or navigate organisational design and change.
Ready to recruit a designer?
Tell us about the role and we'll come back to you within one business day.
Roles we hire for
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A 3D Animator/Modeler creates and animates three-dimensional characters, objects, and environments for use in films, video games, and other digital media.
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An Animator creates dynamic, realistic, and engaging motion for characters, objects, and environments, bringing them to life through techniques like keyframe animation or motion capture, ensuring fluid movement and enhancing the player's immersive experience
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Someone who designs virtual experiences for users. These might be games, interactive experiences, movies or digital marketing products. AR stands for Augmented Reality, where digital information is combined with the real world. VR stands for Virtual Reality, where all of what the user experiences is digitally created.
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An Art Producer in tech manages the creation and delivery of visual assets, coordinating between artists, designers, and developers to ensure high-quality content aligns with project goals and timelines.
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A Brand/Communications Designer creates visual and strategic design elements to communicate a brand's identity, values, and messaging consistently across various platforms and media.
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A Content Designer crafts clear, user-focused content for digital interfaces, ensuring information is accessible, engaging, and aligned with user needs and business goals.
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A Creative Director leads and oversees the creative vision and direction of a project, brand, or organization, guiding the design, messaging, and overall creative strategy to ensure consistency and alignment with business objectives.
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A Creative Technologist blends creativity with technical expertise to develop innovative digital experiences, products, and solutions, often exploring new technologies to push the boundaries of design and interaction.
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A Design Director leads the vision, strategy, and execution of user-centric design across digital products, guiding teams to create cohesive, impactful, and innovative user experiences that align with business objectives.
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A Design Manager oversees and supports a team of designers, translating the design director's vision into actionable projects, ensuring high-quality execution, and fostering collaboration to deliver user-centered solutions that meet business goals.
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A Design Program Manager ensures the smooth execution of design initiatives by optimizing workflows, coordinating stakeholders, and aligning site-specific, product, or program-focused efforts with broader company goals.
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Working from concept art and real-world references, environment artists create and lay out digital 3D environments that form the world of a film or video game.
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A Game Designer conceptualizes, develops, and creates the mechanics, rules, storylines, and overall gameplay experience of video games.
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A Graphic Designer creates visual content using typography, images, and layout techniques to communicate messages and concepts effectively across various media platforms.
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The Head of Design in tech oversees the strategic direction and execution of design across an organization, with responsibilities that can vary based on company size, often overlapping with roles like design director or VP of design, to ensure cohesive, user-focused, and innovative product experiences.
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An Illustrator produces original visual artwork to enhance or complement written content and communicate ideas across various media.
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Industrial Designers are good at translating technical hardware into visually appealing consumer goods. They may do this by drafting creative ideas or creating prototypes or other visual models of a manufactured product.
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A Product Designer creates digital products like websites, apps, or software by focusing on product strategy, interaction design, and visual design, aligning business goals and user needs with technical constraints to deliver seamless and effective experiences.
Are you seeking your next challenge in one of these roles?
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A Product Manager oversees the development and lifecycle of a product, guiding its strategy, design, and execution to meet customer needs and business objectives.
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Riggers create digital skeletons for computer-generated characters. A character rigger designs the skeletal frameworks of animated characters.
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A technical artist uses their knowledge of programming and art to integrate an artist's or animator's visual content into a video game.
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A UX designer creates user-centered designs by researching, prototyping, and testing to ensure digital products are intuitive, accessible, and provide a seamless user experience.
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A User Experience Researcher studies and analyzes user behaviors, needs, and experiences to inform and improve the design and functionality of products or services.
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A Visual/UI Designer is a professional who creates the look and feel of digital interfaces, focusing on aesthetics, layout, and visual elements to ensure an engaging and user-friendly experience.
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VFX artists create photoreal, digitally-generated imagery. The role requires the seamless integration of these effects into live action in feature films.
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We hire for VP roles in design and product for US-based companies.
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A Web Designer is a professional who creates and designs the visual layout, user interface, and overall aesthetic of websites, ensuring they are both functional and visually appealing.