Associate Design Director, Product

About this role

At AKQA Amsterdam, we use creativity to help brands and businesses move forward, from stories and identities to products, services and experiences. We follow the idea wherever it takes us, bringing different people and disciplines together to make it real. As an Associate Design Director, you help shape how brands come to life through digital experiences. You combine strong design thinking with exceptional digital craft, turning ideas into interfaces, interactions and systems that feel intuitive, distinctive and unmistakably part of the brand.

Your depth is digital, but you understand brand, UX, motion, behaviour and technology, and work closely with experience and service designers to make the work stronger. You design by doing. You’re as comfortable shaping an experience as you are getting into Figma, building a prototype or defining a design system. You use AI naturally to explore possibilities, improve how you work and make the systems you create more effective.

Working closely with our Design Director and Creative Director, you bring a distinct point of view to the studio, raise the craft of the work and help the designers around you grow. ROLE REQUIREMENTS Lead the digital craft. Establish and own the design direction across digital products, services and experiences, bringing exceptional UI and digital craft from early thinking through design, prototyping and implementation.

Shape the experience. Contribute strong ideas to products, services and experiences, helping turn brand, business and human needs into something useful, distinctive and compelling. Bring brands to life. Translate what makes a brand distinctive into interfaces, interactions, motion, behaviours and systems, ensuring the experience is as considered as the identity behind it. Design by doing. Work hands-on in Figma and contemporary prototyping tools, making things early and often to explore ideas, test interactions and show what an experience could become.

Understand the experience. Bring a strong understanding of UX and human-centred design, working closely with experience and service designers to challenge assumptions, shape journeys and connect creative ambition with how something needs to work. Build smarter systems. Create and evolve scalable, brand-led design systems, using components, tokens, automation and AI to make them more coherent, adaptable and efficient to use.