Product Design Manager - AI (Ref: 196468)

Title: Product Design Manager (AI)

Industry: Technology / Digital Product

Location: Hybrid (3 days onsite, 2 days remote) – Milwaukee

Type: Full Time

Overview of company:

Forsyth Barnes have partnered with a growing, product led organisation undergoing a significant transformation across its digital and technology landscape. With a strong focus on innovation and investment in AI driven capabilities, the business is rethinking how products are designed, built, and scaled to support both customer and internal experiences. This is a unique opportunity to join at an early stage of that journey and play a key role in shaping the future of product design.

Overview of role:

This is a player coach position, combining hands on product design with strategic leadership. You will be the first senior design hire in a developing function, responsible for elevating design from execution to strategy while working closely with Product, Engineering, and leadership teams. The role sits at the intersection of user experience, product strategy, and emerging AI capabilities. You will help define how modern product design evolves in an environment where AI is increasingly integrated into workflows, with a focus on improving speed from idea to prototype and enhancing user centric experiences.

Key responsibilities:

• Act as the lead Product Design Manager, mentoring and developing a small but growing design capability
• Operate as a player coach, balancing hands on design work with strategic input and leadership
• Partner with Product and Engineering to shape product direction, problem definition, and user experience
• Lead discovery activities including user research, journey mapping, and experience design
• Create wireframes, prototypes, and interaction models, driving faster concept to prototype cycles
• Establish and maintain design standards, ensuring consistency and usability across platforms
• Champion user centred design principles across both customer facing and internal products
• Support the integration of AI driven tools and workflows into the design process
• Improve collaboration across cross functional teams and influence product decision making

Key requirements:

• Experience operating as a player coach within product design, combining hands on delivery with strategic oversight
• Strong user centric design experience, with the ability to operate beyond traditional UX/UI into AI enabled environments
• Experience utilising tools such as Figma, Claude, NotebookLM or similar to accelerate idea to prototype workflows
• Ability to define design standards, workflows and best practice within a developing AI first ecosystem
• Experience working in lean teams, leveraging automation or AI to drive output vs headcount growth
• Exposure to AI driven products or environments would be beneficial, but not essential