Lead Product Designer - Remote

This role is fully remote. You can be located anywhere in Europe with a + in France.

Cycloid’s mission is to help organizations scale their platform engineering initiatives. Our platform optimizes the developer experience and operational efficiency by accelerating the delivery of internal developer portals and platforms. We reduce cognitive load for IT teams and advocate for FinOps and Green IT best practices. With Cycloid, platform teams don’t need to start from scratch to get a fully customized and sustainable solution.

Platform teams use Cycloid to design, build, and run platforms that enable end users to visualize, deploy, and manage projects, interact with DevOps and Cloud automation, and enforce best practices without needing deep expertise, all while keeping cloud costs and carbon footprint under control.

Cycloid is both an Internal Developer Platform and an Internal Developer Portal, with modules covering self-service workflows, platform orchestration, project lifecycle and resource management, FinOps and GreenOps, and an extensible plugin system. It can be consumed via the web console, CLI, or API.

We are an open organization. Your voice matters, and your point of view has a real impact on how we work and what we build. We are looking for someone opinionated, pragmatic, and comfortable shaping direction, not just executing.

Our long-term goal is to build the leading internal developer platform in the world, sustainably.

Cycloid is currently defining the foundations, plans, and specifications for a full-scale rewrite of the platform, including a deep integration of AI into both development and design workflows. We are rethinking architecture, UX patterns, workflows, and the entire product experience.

You will own the design function end-to-end and become the primary driver of the product design vision for this new platform. This is a hands-on IC role: deep product thinking, complex systems UX, architecture-level design, and UI execution.

The design team is currently composed of one person (who will transition out), meaning you will step into a role with full ownership and autonomy, directly collaborating with product, engineering, DevOps experts, and the Founder.

This is a product-first role. You will work on complex workflows, platform and infrastructure UX, configuration models, permissions, environment lifecycle, and the connective tissue that helps highly technical and less technical users be successful.

We value designers who understand how things are built. You don’t need to be an engineer, but you must be comfortable discussing implementation constraints, reading code when useful, and collaborating efficiently with engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the product design vision for Cycloid, in alignment with product strategy and company goals.
• Lead the design of new features end-to-end: discovery, flows, architecture, prototypes, UI, and iterative refinement.
• Shape UX for complex, technical domains such as platform engineering workflows, infrastructure automation, permissions, configuration, and lifecycle management.
• Collaborate daily with product managers, frontend, backend, and DevOps experts to define requirements, challenge assumptions, and validate solutions.
• Establish a scalable design system for the next-generation version of Cycloid, ensuring coherence, quality, and long-term maintainability.
• Integrate AI-powered workflows and tools into design processes to accelerate discovery, prototyping, documentation, and iteration.
• Work closely with frontend teams to translate designs into high-quality Vue.js implementations; contribute small visual or interaction fixes when appropriate.
• Provide clear reporting to the Founder on product direction, priorities, and progress.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in product design, including senior or lead-level ownership of complex products.
• Proven experience driving design for technical products (developer tools, platforms, infrastructure, SaaS, DevOps, or cloud software strongly preferred).
• Demonstrated ability to own design in small or startup teams; able to bootstrap a design practice before scaling the design team progressively.
• Strong interaction design, UX architecture, and UI design skills, with a portfolio that shows systems thinking and clarity.
• Comfortable with frontend fundamentals (HTML, CSS, basic JS) and able to reason about implementation trade-offs.
• Experience influencing product strategy and collaborating closely with engineers.
• Ability to communicate design rationale, constraints, and decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Pragmatic, simplicity-oriented problem-solving mindset (KISS).
• Fluent in English.
• Startup mindset and comfort operating with autonomy.

Nice to have

• French speaker.
• Deep understanding of the IDP, DevOps, Cloud, CMP, or developer tooling ecosystem.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits.
• 100% remote work.
• High autonomy and full ownership of product design.
• A friendly, highly technical team.
• Real influence on the direction of a growing platform.
• Support for professional development and continuous learning.
• Strong commitment to sustainability and positive environmental impact.
• Home office setup budget up to €1200.
• Choose-your-own-device policy.
• One company retreat per year in the EU.

Application process

• Application review (resume + portfolio).
• Interview with the current design lead to discuss your background, design approach, and fit.
• Design exercise to evaluate product thinking, systems design, and execution quality.
• Interviews with cross-functional leads (product, engineering, DevOps) and Founder to align on workflows and product vision.
• Reference check with your previous 3 N+1 managers and direct reports.

Cycloid is committed to equal opportunity and inclusive hiring. If the role resonates with you, we’d be happy to talk, even if you don’t tick every box.