Manager, Product Design & Research,

About Ottimate

Ottimate is an AI-powered finance automation platform that takes the grind out of accounts payable. From scanning invoices to issuing payments and managing spend, we help finance teams cut costs, prevent overpayments, catch fraud, and stay compliant-without slowing down growth. Our AP, Payments, and Spend products share one powerful platform that handles the hard stuff : workflow orchestration, identity and access, provisioning, security, and all the accounting plumbing that keeps the money moving.

Why this role matters

As we scale, the user experience must remain intuitive, powerful, and consistent. We require a dedicated design leader in India to manage, coach, and grow our Product Design team (currently 3 Designers). This is a vital "player-coach" role for someone who can elevate the craft of design, institutionalize user research, and personally drive the most complex design projects. You will be responsible for defining the future state of our platform's look, feel, and usability, ensuring design is a strategic business advantage.

Key Responsibilities :

Design Leadership & Mentorship :

Manage, coach, and provide constructive feedback to the existing Product Design team, fostering a culture of design excellence and technical execution.

Elevate design quality across all features, ensuring consistency, usability, and strong information architecture.

Own the hiring and development pipeline to strategically scale the design team as Ottimate grows.

Design Systems & Operations (Player Function) :

Act as a Player-Coach by personally taking ownership of key design artifacts, including the creation and implementation of a company-wide Design System.

Define and standardize DesignOps processes, including file hygiene, component governance, and design-to-engineering handoff workflows.

User Research & Strategy :

Plan, conduct, and synthesize comprehensive user research (interviews, usability testing, surveys) to generate strategic insights that inform product and design decisions for the India-focused teams.

Evangelize the value of research and data-informed design to the broader product and engineering organization.

Design Advocacy & Collaboration :

Champion a strong, influential design culture, proactively advocating for the user in strategic roadmap discussions.

Partner closely with Product Managers and Engineering Leads to ensure designs are technically feasible, delivered efficiently, and meet business objectives.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in product design, with a portfolio demonstrating your work on complex B2B or FinTech / SaaS applications.

Proven experience managing and mentoring a team of Product Designers (or managing cross-functional design projects with significant leadership responsibility).

Strong expertise in user research methodologies and a track record of using research to drive strategic design decisions.

Exceptional skills in high-fidelity prototyping and design specification.

Executive-level communication skills and the proven ability to inspire and lead a remote or hybrid team.

Experience in the accounts payable, procure-to-pay, or FinTech space is a significant plus.

Location in Bangalore or Chennai is a significant plus.