Design Jobs Board

Product Design Lead – Turbo

About Turbo

Turbo is an US-based, embedded product design studio for venture-backed startups. We work as a fractional in-house design team: shipping real product, fast, at the quality founders need to raise and retain. Clients include Jeep, StockX, KICK and Ramp.

The Role

This is a player-coach role, not a manager-only role. You own the design function, manage the team, and still run senior-level client work yourself. You set the quality bar by example as much as by direction, creative authority, people manager, and practicing senior designer, all at once.

Full-time. 40 hours/week. Fully remote. 

US Eastern Timezone Availability (Ideal candidates are comfortable collaborating during late morning to early evening UK hours)

What You’ll Own

Senior IC work

• Lead active client engagements end-to-end at a senior level
• Model the quality standard you hold the rest of the team to
• Step into any active project when bandwidth or quality demands it
• Work fluently in Figma and AI-native tools (Claude, Cursor, Codex) to design and build software

Creative direction

• Develop the visual direction, interaction principles, and reference treatments for each client after kickoff
• Run team alignment at the start of each engagement to pull collaborative input into the concept
• Own the concept framework the tools, prompts, and refinement process that produce Turbo’s POV on a new client’s product
• Present creative direction directly to clients; be the design voice in the room

Design quality & process

• Review and approve every deliverable before it reaches the client designers submit 24 hours before any review; you review in Figma, comment, and approve for presentation
• Own the quality gate: nothing ships to a client without your sign-off
• Scope client feedback after reviews directional feedback moves forward; fundamental direction changes get flagged and routed to ops
• Own the design-to-dev handoff so design intent survives implementation

Team leadership

• Directly manage 6+ product designers across active client engagements
• Assign work, balance workload, and make sure no designer is siloed or overloaded
• Run weekly designer syncs; lead growth conversations and skill development
• Hold the team to the Turbo-quality bar
• Own hiring recommendations and onboarding as the team scales

Client & cross-functional

• Join client kickoffs and establish the design team’s role and approach from day one
• Own design-specific client relationships be the voice clients trust on craft
• Handle design escalations before they reach the founder
• Partner with the PM on timeline feasibility and flag when scope and delivery pace are misaligned
• Provide design scoping input that feeds into proposals

What This Role Does Not Own

• Sales, ops, project management: that’s Head of Operations
• Day-to-day client comms and timelines: that’s the PM
• Business development and new client relationships: that’s the founder
• Final hiring decisions: that’s the founder, with your strong input

Who You Are

• 7+ years of product design, with experience leading other designers
• Senior craft in Figma; fluent with AI-native design and build tools
• Comfortable presenting and defending design directly to founders and execs
• Player-coach mindset you lead by doing, not by delegating
• High bar for quality, low tolerance for politics
   

Why Join Turbo

• Real product, real founders. Every engagement ships. Your work goes live.
• Embedded, not at arm’s length. You operate inside the client’s product team, not as an outside vendor.
• No politics, no egos. Small team. Senior people. Clear ownership.
• Fully remote. Work from anywhere as long as you can take calls.
• Growth. You’ll shape the team and the standard as Turbo scales.

How to Apply

Submit an application here

P.S. no recruiters.