Product Design Lead – Hotel Accommodations (Gurugram-based)

Gurugram, India

We believe in making it easier for everyone to experience the world.

At Agoda, we’re committed to making global travel accessible to everyone. Our Product Design team is dedicated to creating outstanding experiences for millions of travelers. We aim to make Agoda the top choice for travelers to plan and book their holiday and travel plans. Our users deserve exceptional experiences, and we’re here to build a remarkable product that simplifies their interaction with Agoda.

Role Overview:

As a Lead Product Designer in the Core Accommodations team, you’ll join a passionate group focused on improving the way users find and book accommodations on Agoda. You’ll be responsible for transforming concepts into engaging user experiences that resonate globally. Your role involves leading our product designers, providing mentorship, and aligning with design processes and strategies. You should have experience in agile teams, a strong understanding of the product life-cycle, and the ability to drive positive change. This role reports to the Hotels Accommodations team based in Bangkok.

Responsibilities:

• Have a large amount of ownership and autonomy across the entire design process; rather than designing individual features, you’ll define the end-to-end product experience
• Foster a customer-obsessed design culture by sharing best practices, evangelizing design principles, and influencing product strategy.
• Operationalize the vision and the strategy; evangelize the vision to diverse audiences across Agoda
• Lead business partners and stakeholders through brainstorming and ideation exercises to stimulate new thinking, leveraging insights from the design research process.
• Communicate fluidly and effectively with both senior executives and the team, often in the same meeting, striking a balance in tone and content to service multiple audiences.
• Inspire, mentor, and develop other strategists, researchers, and designers on the team.
• Utilize research to benchmark Agoda against competitors, identify user needs, and enhance user interaction.
• Use data and customer insights to confidently share design solutions with senior leaders
• Use systems-level design thinking to drive design solutions from your team that scale.
• Work cross-functionally to drive elegant design solutions from early concept through final implementation and experimentation iteration.

As a Lead Product Designer at Agoda, this means you have a track record of:

• 10+ years of experience working on complex consumer-facing digital products, mobile, or web experiences
• Demonstrated experience successfully leading multi-disciplinary teams and leading full life cycle product development process, from product strategy through execution and market introduction
• Demonstrated experience synthesizing large, strategic & challenging business, technology and customers’ needs into actionable plans with demonstrated impact
• Demonstrated experience synthesizing large, strategic & challenging business, technology and customers’ needs into actionable plans with demonstrated impact
• Experience providing and effectively communicating strategic and tactical recommendations based on data
• Understands and demonstrates systematic design thinking. Must demonstrate ability to design solutions that solve problems at multiple levels of scale (simple and complex scenarios, edge cases.)
• Exceptional interpersonal, collaborative, and creative problem-solving skills. Excellent communication skills with an ability to thrive in ambiguity.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience in OTA products is a plus.

Qualities we seek in a Product Design Lead:

• Being the voice of the Customer: Representing the customer’s perspective throughout the product development journey.
• Understanding Business KPIs: A deep understanding of KPIs to align product design with business goals.
• Strategic Priority: Collaborating with C-level, product teams, to a vision strategy to drive the product’s success.
• Driving Change and Innovation: Initiating innovative solutions that can help Agoda drive transformative change in our product.
• Identifying opportunities to make a significant impact and improve outcomes.
• Managing Ambiguity: Effectively handling ambiguous product requests with product and designers.
• Contributing to roadmaps: Developing product roadmaps in collaboration with product managers and product designers.
• Stakeholder management: Being agile and able to manage various situations with different leadership styles.
• Lead by Example setting a leadership example by aligning with the company’s vision and direction.
• Effective articulation of ideas, design decisions, and solutions.
• Leading collaboration with your stakeholders across design, product, engineering & research to achieve successful business and customer outcomes.
• Contribution to our culture: motivation, optimism, quality, integrity.
• You’re familiar with the Human-Centered Design process and accessibility guidelines. You know how to keep your partners at the front and center of each project while balancing the needs of the business and technology.
• You balance exploration with execution. Exploration and execution are both key to building innovative experiences. You understand when it’s time to explore and when it’s time to deliver.
• You seek feedback: You have a growth mindset, are comfortable soliciting feedback, and are curious to learn from a spectrum of perspectives.
• Ability to translate both quantitative & qualitative insights into design decisions.

Career growth opportunities:
This role has the potential for growth to CG L7 (Principal Lead)