Digital Product Director

Digital Product Director — IDEO London Digital Product Director In a NutshellIDEO London is looking for a Digital Product Director to help shape what it means to design AI-driven products that people actually trust. This is a senior role for someone who thinks of AI as a design material — not a feature set — and who understands that the hardest problems in AI aren't just technical.

They're human.

You'll spend most of your time embedded in client work, directing product engagements from brief through to market. But you'll also help build something bigger: IDEO's AI product practice in Europe, at a moment when the regulatory landscape — the EU AI Act, CSRD, EHDS — is becoming a genuine creative opportunity for the organisations brave enough to treat it that way.

You'll report to the London Leadership Team and work closely with directors and interdisciplinary teams across the studio. Business development is a natural part of the role — growing relationships, shaping opportunities, and helping clients understand what it genuinely means to build AI into their products and organisations responsibly.

Why is this role important for IDEO's work?

The question has shifted. Companies aren't asking "what can AI do?" anymore. They're asking "how do we make AI investment turn into something our customers actually want — and trust?"That's the work. And it takes more than technical fluency. It takes the ability to sit at the intersection of human need, business ambition, and the emerging rules that will define how AI gets built in Europe.

IDEO's London studio is positioned to lead here — and this role is central to making that happen.

We're not building an ML shop. We're building the practice that helps clients move from aspiration to reality: designing socio-technical systems that are trustworthy by design, not just compliant by accident.

Once here you will

Lead digital product engagements from brief through to market, owning quality, pace, and the client relationship throughout

Act as the main client point of contact on strategic accounts, building trust beyond the immediate project team Direct multidisciplinary teams with clear thinking and steady hands, keeping work moving without losing rigour or craft

Help clients navigate the shift from AI-bolted-on to AI-native — including what it means to design for agentic systems, human–AI collaboration, and the messy reality of non-deterministic interfaces

Prototype and pressure-test concepts early. IDEO's edge is that we prototype with live models — revealing the nuance of human and AI interaction rather than theorising about it Contribute to our AIx practice — developing tools, methods, and points of view that sharpen how IDEO and our clients think about designing with AI responsibly and at scale

Help us treat the European regulatory environment as a design brief. The EU AI Act isn't a constraint to manage around; it's a creative opportunity to design through

Coach and mentor designers and product leads, modelling excellent craft and client communication

Scope and frame follow-on work, growing relationships and helping define where IDEO can have the greatest impact

Represent IDEO externally through talks, writing, and thought leadership — particularly at the intersection of trustworthy AI and human-centred design

We're looking for someone with Someone with a strong track record of leading and launching complex digital products — senior or director-level, ideally across both in-house and consultancy environmentsA designer and leader who has shipped products where AI plays a meaningful role — not as decoration, but as something that genuinely changes what the product can do and how people experience it Someone who can hold both rigour and imagination: the discipline to ship, and the curiosity to prototype what hasn't been built yet Genuine fluency in how AI is reshaping product design — including agentic systems, LLM-powered capabilities, and human–AI interaction patterns.

You understand the real trade-offs, not just the marketing

Confident working in Figma and prototyping early — whether that's a clickable mockup, a coded proof-of-concept, or a live model running in a…