Head of Design
HackerRank
Hybrid in Bangalore, IndiahybridPosted 1 month ago
Skill Required
DesignInformation ArchitecturePrototypingSketch
Key highlights
- Head of Design role leading product designers and design managers.
- Significant product design experience with ownership of complex platforms.
- Direct experience delivering AI‑powered or agentic products.
- Portfolio demonstrating strong judgment, leadership, and high‑quality execution.
- Framer experience is a preferred qualification.
- Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer.
Role overview
HackerRank is hiring a Head of Design to define and own the experience for its platform and lead the organization responsible for delivering it. The role guides both traditional product experiences and emerging AI‑native and agentic experiences through a team of product designers and design managers, serving as a strategic leader alongside Product and Engineering leadership.
Responsibilities
- Set experience strategy. Define the design vision for HackerRank’s platform and turn company strategy into a clear experience direction. Connect near‑term product decisions to a coherent view of where technical hiring and developer skills are going. Keep the organization close to customers and developers, using research, product data, prototypes, and direct observation to shape the work.
- Drive AI and agentic fluency. Shape how people interact with AI across the platform, from embedded intelligence to autonomous agents. Establish rigor around AI experience evals, agentic specifications, and emerging interaction practices. Set the expectation that designers experiment with models, agents, and code‑adjacent tools—and model that behavior yourself.
- Be the quality bar. Raise the quality and coherence of HackerRank’s end‑to‑end experience. Guide the information architecture, workflows, interaction patterns, and systems that make the platform feel like one product. Have a clear point of view on what good looks like, make that standard practical, and raise the quality of everything HackerRank ships.
- Drive strategic partnership. Operate as a peer to Product and Engineering leadership. Shape product strategy, investment priorities, and roadmaps; clarify the problems worth solving; and make the trade‑offs required to balance customer value, technical reality, speed, and long‑term platform quality.
- Build and lead the team. Lead an organization that includes product designers and design managers. Hire and develop strong leaders, establish clear ownership, raise the quality of critique and decision‑making, and create an environment where designers can move quickly without lowering the bar.
- Get close to the work. Act as a maker who can lead others through ambiguity, proactively spending time building with models and agents and shipping your work.
- Prototype alongside engineers. Demonstrate enough technical curiosity and fluency to prototype alongside engineers, explore ideas with modern AI and coding tools, and understand how model behavior, architecture, latency, cost, data, and evaluation shape the experience.
- Communicate product perspective. Develop your own perspective on the product and market, clearly communicate it to non‑designers, and build support for improvements across the experience, from broad product strategy to the smallest interaction details.
- Lead senior designers and design managers, raising quality without slowing the team, building early, putting ideas in front of customers, learning from real behavior, and refining from evidence.
Requirements
- A portfolio or body of work that demonstrates strong judgment, leadership, and high‑quality execution, showing what shipped, what changed, and the role you played.
- Significant product design experience, including ownership of complex products or platforms and several years leading designers and design managers.
- A track record of building and developing strong design organizations, including hiring senior talent, coaching managers, clarifying ownership, and improving the overall caliber of the team.
- Experience partnering with senior Product and Engineering leaders to shape strategy, prioritize investments, and turn ambiguous opportunities into shipped products.
- Direct experience delivering AI‑powered products, agentic experiences, or other non‑deterministic systems.
- A hands‑on approach, enjoying getting into the work, making ideas tangible, and helping teams ship stronger results.
- Fluency with modern design and prototyping tools, including demonstrated use of AI, code‑adjacent tools, or working software to explore and communicate ideas.
Nice to have
- Framer experience is a plus.
Additional details
- HackerRank helps companies like NVIDIA, Amazon, and Microsoft hire and upskill the next generation of developers based on skills, not pedigree. The platform is trusted by over 2,500 of the world’s most innovative companies to build strong engineering teams ready for what’s next.
- Software has entered an era where humans and AI build side by side. As this shift accelerates, the definition of strong technical talent is changing. HackerRank gives companies better ways to identify and invest in next‑generation skills.
- People at HackerRank care deeply about the impact of their work and sweat the small details so customers can be wildly successful with products they genuinely love to use. The company moves with urgency and believes great outcomes come from high standards.
- HackerRank is a proud equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer. The company provides equal opportunity to everyone for employment based on individual performance and qualification and never discriminates based on race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital, veteran, or disability status. All applicant information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
- Notice to prospective HackerRank job applicants: Recruiters use @hackerrank.com email addresses. HackerRank never asks for payment or credit check information to apply, interview, or work here.
- Want to learn more about HackerRank? Check out HackerRank.com to explore products, solutions, and resources, and dive into the company’s story and mission.
- Social links: LinkedIn, X, Blog, Instagram, Life@HackerRank.