Senior Product Designer (UX/UI) wanted to join our dynamic team in Portugal. ### The opportunity:
We are seeking a passionate and talented Senior UX/UI Product Designer to join our dynamic, flexible team, embedded directly with a leading automotive client. This hybrid role is ideal for a highly skilled individual who excels in crafting best-in-class user experience and user interface design and is eager to create exceptional digital experiences that drive engagement, enhance customer journeys, and foster loyalty within the fast-evolving automotive sector. You will be at the forefront of digital design for a major automotive brand, problem-solving with user-centricity at the core. Working collaboratively within a cross-functional flex team, you will craft delightful and impactful solutions across a diverse range of projects, from in-car infotainment systems and companion apps to digital customer portals and online retail experiences. Please note that this job is a full-time perm position in Portugal.
What you’ll be doing:
You are a highly motivated, self-sufficient, and top-tier Senior UX/UI Product Designer with a drive to create exceptional digital experiences for our automotive client. Your passion for user experience and user interface design pushes you to find smarter, more effective ways of delivering high-quality outcomes, underpinned by a meticulous attention to detail across both concept and execution. You understand the critical role of bridging the gap between UX and UI, bringing end-to-end expertise across products, services, devices, and channels within the automotive ecosystem. From defining user journeys and interaction models for vehicle configuration tools to refining visual design for in-car displays, micro-interactions for connected services, and component behaviour for customer apps, you ensure every element is considered, consistent, and purposeful. You will play a key role in shaping digital products and services end-to-end for our automotive client, working across the full design spectrum—from early discovery and experience definition through to polished, high-fidelity UI execution—while leading design thinking across complex and sometimes ambiguous problem spaces specific to the automotive industry. ### What we want from you:
Automotive Sector Acumen (ideally): Confident working within the automotive sector, quickly building domain understanding and adapting your approach to different levels of design maturity and stakeholder expectations unique to the industry. - Strategic Autonomy: Proven ability to work autonomously and lead design within complex, fast-paced environments, often with incomplete or evolving requirements typical of large enterprise projects. - Stakeholder Leadership: Strong experience in stakeholder management, with the ability to challenge, influence, and align senior stakeholders across various disciplines (e.g., product, marketing, engineering, brand) within a large client organisation. - Problem Framing & Direction: Demonstrated ability to frame complex problems, define clear opportunities, and actively shape product direction, rather than just responding to briefs. - End-to-End Design Expertise: Proven ability to operate as a true end-to-end product designer, seamlessly transitioning between UX strategy, interaction design, and high-fidelity UI execution without loss of quality. - Flexible Delivery Model: Comfortable operating within various delivery models (e.g., project-based, retained), balancing pace and quality while managing multiple workstreams, priorities, and stakeholders as part of a flexible client-embedded team. - Design System Mastery: Strong experience working with complex, tokenised design systems, with a deep understanding of component architecture including variants, properties, and scalable design patterns for consistent brand experiences. - Responsive & Adaptive Design: Solid understanding of responsive design principles and behaviour logic, ensuring consistent and high-quality experiences across diverse devices and platforms, including web, mobile apps, and in-car interfaces. - Figma Fluency: Advanced proficiency in Figma, with the ability to create scalable, well-structured design files that support collaborative workflows, seamless developer handover, and systemisation. - Multi-Brand Adaptability: Experience working across multiple brands and visual identities (e.g., sub-brands within an automotive group), with the ability to adapt design approach while maintaining consistency, quality, and alignment to specific brand guidelines. - Compelling Artefact Creation: Ability to produce high-quality supporting design artefacts beyond core product UI, including interactive prototypes, engaging presentations, and visual assets (e.g., release notes, comms materials) to support stakeholder alignment, internal communication, and user research. - Data-Driven Decisions: Expertise in translating user research and data into actionable insights, driving informed design decisions and building stakeholder confidence. - Strong Communication: Strong communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to clearly articulate design rationale, trade-offs, and recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences
What we can offer you:
Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are. **Permanent only:**We offer a great benefits package including training opportunities, medical insurance, Dental insurance, Meal cards, social events, family friendly policies, discounts with hundreds of retailers and much more. Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage. We lead with Heart, fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish. We empower your Brainsfor innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges. And we champion Courage, inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday. *How we use AI in the recruitment process:
To ensure more focused and engaging conversations, we leverage AI in our recruitment process exclusively for secure, objective note-taking, never for evaluative judgments. This allows our team to be fully present with you. You are always welcome to request a transcript of these notes or opt out of this feature at any time. Opting out will not impact the outcome of the interview process"*
AT VML Enterprise Solutions
Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands. We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business. As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team. #LI-EMEA
We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office an average of four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. VML is a WPP agency (NYSE: WPP). For more information, please visit www.vml.com, and follow along on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. When you click "Submit Application", this will send any information you add below to VML. Before you do this, we think it's a good idea to read through our Recruitment Privacy Policy. California residents should read our California Recruitment Privacy Notice. This explains what we do with your personal data when you apply for a role with us, and, how you can update the information you have provided us with or how to remove it.
