Director of Product Design

Job Description

Product Design Director

Our Design & Research org brings together world-class designers and researchers with a unified purpose: to connect people to the news and information that matters most. We're the strategic force that transforms deep user understanding into exceptional product experiences across our entire portfolio—from The Wall Street Journal to Factiva.

Our integrated approach ensures that research insights directly shape design decisions, while design explorations reveal new research opportunities. Together, we're building coherent, accessible experiences that honor our 135-year legacy while pushing us boldly into the future. We're a globally distributed team spearheading a digital transformation at Dow Jones, newly staffed by industry leaders from Google, LinkedIn, The New York Times, and more. Through our combined expertise in design craft and research rigor, we ensure that millions of users can depend on our platforms for truth in a world full of noise.

About the Role

We’re seeking a Product Design Director to lead a mid-size organization spanning a major product or business unit, setting portfolio-level strategy while building management bench strength. This role is for a senior leader ready to transform organizational needs into concrete design initiatives with measurable impact.

As a Product Design Director, you’ll partner with senior stakeholders including VPs and other directors to establish your team as strategic partners to the business. You’ll lead design managers and their teams, creating systematic approaches to product design quality and talent development while building the organizational capability to deliver at scale. This is an opportunity to enable portfolio-wide excellence through your managers while developing the next generation of design leaders.

You’ll translate organizational needs into concrete initiatives, drive alignment when teams have competing priorities, and take accountability for your portfolio’s success. This role demands someone who can operate at the intersection of strategy and execution, building organizational capability while delivering business outcomes.

The Product Design Director will report to a Senior Director, VP, or SVP within the Design & Research organization.

This is a hybrid position, based in Barcelona.

You Will

• Lead a mid-size organization spanning a major product or business unit, setting portfolio-level design direction while empowering managers to make decisions within established frameworks. You’ll own program-level outcomes that impact business objectives, translating organizational needs into concrete product design initiatives with measurable impact.

• Build strategic partnerships with senior stakeholders including peer Directors, Sr. Directors, and VPs to align on complex objectives. You’ll drive alignment across your Triad partners, Marketing, and Editorial teams, establishing high design standards while navigating political dynamics.

• Develop organizational talent strategy by managing your managers, coaching them on people management fundamentals and cross-functional collaboration. You’ll allocate talent based on skills and strategic priorities, participate in hiring decisions, and shape recruiting strategy while building partnerships with internal and external recruiters.

• Create strategic thinking capability across your portfolio area, enabling managers to see beyond individual projects. You’ll establish partnerships with Data & AI and Research that inform portfolio strategy, building forums where teams propose program direction based on data-informed understanding of user behavior.

• Establish scalable design operations that enable best practices across your program area while maintaining team agility. You’ll define which processes are essential versus adaptable, creating frameworks that reduce duplicated effort while preserving team autonomy and innovation.

• Champion design quality and business impact by setting benchmarks that inspire teams while remaining achievable. You’ll show how excellent design work drives user adoption and business success, creating frameworks that connect design quality to metrics your teams can actually influence.

You Have

• 12+ years of product design experience with 5+ years in leadership, including experience managing managers or leading complex organizational initiatives.

• Proven track record leading portfolio-level scaled design initiatives with demonstrated ability to translate organizational strategy into concrete design programs with measurable business impact.

• Excellence in stakeholder management with ability to influence and align senior leaders including VPs and C-level executives across multiple functions.

• Strong organizational development skills including talent planning, performance management, succession planning, and building high-performing management teams.

• Business and strategic acumen with ability to connect design initiatives to OKRs, create compelling business cases, and demonstrate ROI for design investments.

• Experience with design operations at scale, establishing processes, governance, and infrastructure that enable design quality and efficiency across multiple teams.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Design, HCI, or related field (advanced degree strongly preferred).

Nice to Have

• Experience in media, publishing, or financial services

• Background in organizational transformation or change management

• Track record of building design organizations from scratch

• Experience with M&A integration or product consolidation

• External visibility through speaking, writing, or industry leadership

• Experience managing distributed global teams

• Background in both B2B and B2C products at enterprise scale

Our Benefits

• Comprehensive Healthcare Plans for you and your family (paid by Dow Jones)

• Extra paid Time Off (30 days of holidays/year)

• Possibility to work remotely for 3 months/year (desplazamiento program) and one week of remote work per quarter

• Meal benefit with Pluxee (171€/month on top of your salary)

• Retirement Plans (Dow Jones will pay 2% of a members Pensionable Salary and match employee contribution up to a maximum of 3 %).

• Live insurance

• Well-being Resources (185€ allowance per quarter, Classpass, Spring Health, etc.)

• Family Care Benefits & Caregiving Support

• Hone and Linkedin learning courses for your further development

• Employee Referral Program

Base Pay Range: 95,000 € - 120,000 €

We’re committed to offering competitive and flexible compensation to attract top talent. This pay range reflects our good faith estimate for the role and may vary based on a candidate’s experience, skills, location, and other relevant factors.

For bonus-eligible roles, targets are determined based on multiple considerations, including market benchmarks and individual contributions.

For benefits-eligible roles, we offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package covering health, retirement, wellbeing, and more, along with optional benefits to meet the diverse needs of our employees.

Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other protected characteristic. We strongly encourage applications from all qualified individuals, including women, people with disabilities, and those from underrepresented groups.

Reasonable Accommodation

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application and/or interview process. If you need assistance or accommodation in completing your application or participating in an interview due to a disability, email us at Ver el correo electrónico en click.appcast.io. Please put “Reasonable Accommodation” in the subject line and provide a brief description of the type of assistance you need. This inbox will not be monitored for application status updates.