VP of Research and Design

Location: United Kingdom; Spain; Dubai Workplace: remote Help Us Build The Future of Travel At Airalo, we're making it easier for people to stay connected wherever they travel. As the world's first eSIM store, we help millions of travelers access affordable mobile data in 200+ countries and regions around the world. Today, we're a team of 400+ people across 60+ countries, building a product used by travelers every day. We've grown quickly, but we've worked hard to keep what matters: trust, ownership, and the freedom for people to do great work without unnecessary layers or bureaucracy. We're fully remote by design, genuinely global, and united by a shared mission to make travel simpler for everyone. Your Next Destination Location: Remote, anywhere in Spain, the UK, or the UAE. Contract: Spain: Full-time, permanent contrato indefinido via Deel (our employer of record in Spain) UK: Full-time, permanent (local contract) UAE: Full-time, permanent via Deel (our employer of record in the UAE) Benefits: Learn more about our benefits here in this link - https://airalo-public.notion.site/Benefits-25396a97ffca81fb9bc1f0be479f1be3?pvs=74  Languages: English is our main working language day to day, so you'll need to be comfortable communicating in it both in meetings and async. Curious what it's actually like to work at Airalo? We've put together a guide for each of the hubs we hire from most, covering our benefits, remote culture, employment setup, and what our team values most: Life at Airalo · España: https://airalo-public.notion.site/life-at-airalo-espana Life at Airalo · United Kingdom: https://airalo-public.notion.site/life-at-airalo-united-kingdom Life at Airalo · United Arab Emirates: https://airalo-public.notion.site/life-at-airalo-united-arab-emirates What you own: Own every surface, consumer and business. On consumer, that's acquisition, conversion, customer experience, retention, core systems, Airalo One, and our new bets, each with its own product manager and engineering team. On B2B, it's reseller experience, corporate experience, and partner onboarding. Make all of it feel like one relationship rather than a series of separate transactions. Set design strategy. Define what the product should feel like in two years, which bets get us there, and what we are deliberately not doing. Lead research and design as one function. Run the product design guild and the research team, with research shaping strategy rather than answering requests for it. Own brand in the product, co-authored with Marketing. Marketing leads the campaign and positioning; you own how the brand is felt, the design system, typography and colour, motion and haptics, in-app photography, and the tone of everything from a paywall to an error message. Build quality as a system. Define what finished means and hold the authority to enforce it: one design system the B2B platform inherits from rather than forks, accessibility designed in rather than retrofitted, and words treated as design rather than copy added at the end. Your First Year: Land the brand evolution in the product, with our flagship connectivity launch as the vehicle. Take the app from viable to lovable: micro-animations, haptics, and patterns that feel native on iOS and Android rather than one layout that satisfies neither. Decide what the design system needs — it has a real accessibility standard and no dedicated engineers, running on champions per platform. Draw the working boundary between design and product management so designers are neither order-takers nor deciding alone. Move research from answering questions to setting them, and make its output something the roadmap actually turns on. Build the career framework for design and research, with a bar you can defend at each level. Hire, tell us what shape the team should be, not only how big. Must-haves: Have led design for a business at real scale, responsible for a whole product rather than a slice of one, consumer depth matters most, and experience also running a business or professional product is a strong advantage, since running both from one team is the specific problem here. Have led or worked closely with research, and know what it's for beyond validation. Have written a design strategy, won the argument to get it adopted, and lived with the result. Are still close to the work, not the main designer, but someone whose judgement on a screen is worth deferring to. Have grown designers into leads and leads into managers. Can make the case for design in commercial terms as fluently as in design terms. Reach for one system that scales rather than bespoke solutions that multiply, and know what a design system costs to maintain, not only to launch. You should apply if… You think in systems, not screens. You can hold a whole product, consumer and B2B, as one relationship, and you build the design system, career framework, and quality bar that make good work repeatable rather than heroic. You treat research as a strategic input, not a rubber stamp. You want research setting the questions the roadmap turns on, not just validating decisions already made. You can own brand inside the product. You're comfortable co-authoring brand strategy with Marketing while owning how it actually shows up, motion, tone, typography, the moment a customer touches the product. You've done this at scale and stayed close to the work. You've led design organizations, but your eye for a screen is still one people defer to. You can argue design in the language of the business. You've written and sold a design strategy, and you can make its commercial case as fluently as its craft case. Why People Join Us 🇪🇸 Why people join us in Spain We started Airalo to make staying connected effortless, wherever you are in the world. Today, millions of travelers rely on our eSIMs, and many of the people building the product were customers first. Our team is united by a shared belief that great work happens when people are trusted to own what they do. As Airalo continues to grow, so do the opportunities to learn, take on new challenges, and make a real impact. For many of our teammates in Spain, it's the combination of stability, flexibility, and genuine work-life balance that makes Airalo feel like home. 🇬🇧 Why people join us in the UK We started Airalo to make staying connected effortless, wherever you are in the world. Today, millions of travelers rely on our eSIMs, and many of the people building the product first discovered us as customers. Our team spans 60+ countries, but what people often notice quickly is how work actually feels here. There's trust to own what you do, space to focus without constant layers of process, and a clear sense of what you're responsible for from day one. As Airalo continues to grow, people tend to stay for a mix of things: the chance to work on a product used globally, the autonomy to shape how they work, and the opportunity to keep taking on new challenges without getting stuck in one lane. 🇦🇪 Why people join us in the UAE We're a fully remote team across 60+ countries, built on a simple idea: trust people to own their work and deliver without unnecessary layers or heavy process getting in the way. Many people joining us from the UAE are looking for clarity in scope and real ownership in their role. They want to know what they're responsible for, how success is measured, and have direct access to the people making decisions. What often stands out is the combination of a global, product-led company with a flexible remote setup. For many, it's the opportunity to work on a product used by millions of travelers worldwide, alongside a team that moves quickly and values clear ownership and accountability. Before You Hit Apply By applying, you acknowledge and agree that, in case of successful application, Airalo may request to run background checks as a condition for entering into an agreement with you. Rest assured that these checks will only occur upon your prior consent and at the end of the selection process, and will be strictly limited to what is allowed under the laws that are applicable to you. All data that you share or that we collect in connection with such checks will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy, available here: www.airalo.com/more-info/privacy-policy?srsltid=AfmBOooBT0rXAj1FaNelZ3VfN0wvhwzvAoxdtHnOKSVETpiSjiXVuycy    We sincerely thank all applicants in advance for submitting their interest in this opportunity. Airalo is an equal-opportunity employer and values diversity, equity & inclusion. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations upon request for individuals with disabilities throughout our job interview process. At Airalo, we believe in roaming-free recruitment. Just as we provide clear connectivity for travelers, we provide clear salary ranges for our candidates. 🌍 This role is remote and open to candidates across our supported locations in Europe and UAE. The range below reflects the full salary range for this role across the countries where it's available: 📍 UK: £168,000 – £252,000 📍 Spain: €154,000 – €185,000 📍 UAE: 684,400 – 1,026,600 AED Your Home Destination: 🛫 Local market rates and cost of living vary. Your specific range within this band depends on where you're based, and there's room to discuss what's right for the person and the role. We'll walk through your range together on your first call with our Talent team so we're aligned for takeoff! 🎒✨