About the company
n8n is the open workflow orchestration platform built for the new era of AI. We give technical teams the freedom of code with the speed of no-code, so they can automate faster, smarter, and without limits. Backed by a fiercely inventive community and 500+ builder-approved integrations, we’re changing the way people bring systems together and scale ideas for impact.
Since our founding in 2019, we’ve grown into a diverse team of over 260 - working across Europe and the US, connected by a shared builder spirit and with our centre of gravity in Berlin. Along the way, we’ve:
- Cultivated a community of more than 650,000 active developers and builders
- Earned 190K+ GitHub stars, making us one of the world’s Top 40 most popular projects
- Backed by top investors, from Sequoia’s first German seed to our SAP's recent strategic investment - bringing us to a $5.2bn valuation
Responsibilities
- Own the quality bar: Set a clear, consistent quality bar that the team can orient around and build toward, so great work becomes the natural output of how we design together.
- Build review processes and critique rituals that give the team a shared language for quality and the confidence to make strong craft decisions together.
- Evolve the design system and QA practices so the bar rises as the team grows.
- Dig into one of the most genuinely interesting UX challenges in the space: n8n has historically had a steep learning curve for new users. Your job is to lower that floor without losing the power that experienced builders love.
- Drive design's strategic influence: Shape product strategy, not just respond to it. Bring design thinking into roadmap conversations and help surface user problems before they become someone else's brief.
- Help lead n8n's expansion toward a broader, less technical audience, a deliberate and exciting strategic shift that design should be leading.
- Build the kind of relationships with Product, Engineering, and leadership where design is a genuine thought partner at every stage.
- Build and grow the team: Lead a team of around 14 designers today: 2 Design Leads each working with ~6 ICs, plus Design Engineering and UX Research (with more hires ahead).
- Shape the team structure, career framework, and progression paths so people know where they stand and where they're going.
- Create a culture of high standards and honest feedback, where people feel supported to do their best work and have a clear sense of what great looks like.
- Own hiring and headcount planning for the department, and help us grow without losing what makes the team good.
- Build research into how we make decisions: Establish a pragmatic, continuous research practice from the ground up. We're making our first dedicated UX research hires, so there's real room to shape this.
- Make customer insight, product data, and community feedback a live input to product decisions, so teams are building from evidence at every step.
- Connect research to the decisions that matter most: activation, adoption, retention, and helping new users find their way into n8n with confidence.
- Help the team work in new ways: Champion practical AI adoption inside the design org, from prototyping and research synthesis to design QA and workflow efficiency.
- Help the team stay curious and current as the tools, patterns, and expectations around AI products continue to evolve fast.
- Model the kind of working style you want to see: thoughtful, adaptive, and genuinely excited about what's changing.
Requirements
- Product design leadership: You have managed managers, coached senior designers, and built design teams that improve both craft and business outcomes, including making hard performance calls when needed.
- Complex product systems experience: You have led design across complex or developer-facing products where UX quality depends on deep product understanding.
- Craft authority: You are a quality bar, not just someone who appreciates quality. You can identify great work, explain why it's great, and hold the line on standards even when it's uncomfortable.
- Strategic influence, not just strategic thinking: You have made design a co-equal in product conversations, not a downstream function. You know how to bring people with you, create debate, and drive decisions.
- Structured problem-solving under ambiguity: You find your way into unclear problems and create a plan. You don't just ask good questions, you answer them. You move forward when there's no map.
- AI-era product judgment: You understand the AI, automation, or adjacent tooling landscape and can turn emerging patterns into usable, trustworthy product experiences.
- Research literacy: You know how to build research into product development so insight becomes part of how teams make decisions, not a separate artifact.
- Data-informed decision making: You use product analytics, research, and customer evidence to guide decisions instead of relying on taste or opinion alone.
- Org design and performance management: You can design team structures, define career paths, and manage performance effectively.