Staff Product Designer | Payments

Job description

ABOUT APRON Small businesses are the backbone of the economy, but the systems they rely on are slow, manual, and built for someone else. The gap between what payments demand of an owner and their ability to actually manage them is one of the biggest reasons small businesses fail on cash flow, not on demand for their product. Apron closes that gap. We're digitising and simplifying the entire payments process: capturing invoices, issuing expense cards, paying and getting paid, all in one place. Founded in 2021, we've grown to ~100 people across the UK, Germany, Spain and beyond, backed by Index Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Zinal Growth and Tony Fadell, having raised $50m. The next phase isn't incremental. We're building a category-defining, global fintech business, and that requires a design team that can operate at the same level of ambition. WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS This isn't a single-feature design job. Payments sits at the core of Apron's product: it touches nearly every other part of the system, carries the most dependencies, and is one of the highest-stakes design problems in the company right now. Getting it right means understanding not just interaction design, but the accounting domain underneath it and the reality of how SMBs actually run their finances. Every decision here has to be weighed against a system of decisions already made, and it's on you to judge when to work within that system and when it needs to be reworked. You will shape how the product works as a whole, not just how one flow feels, and have a real, visible impact on the company's revenue. We're looking for someone genuinely energised by that level of responsibility and ambiguity. WHAT YOU'LL OWN - End-to-end design of our core payments product, from ambiguous problem framing through to shipped, polished experiences - Interfaces for genuinely complex financial workflows that are both functional and delightful - A point of view on how the product should work as a system, brought proactively to product and engineering, not just executed on request - The design system as it applies to payments: consistency and scalability across a fast-growing surface area - Raising the bar across the design team through feedback, critique, and documented judgment - A close partnership with our UX researcher, turning user insight into decisions WHAT WE NEED - Over 8 years of deep product design experience in complex domains where understanding the 'why' behind a decision matters as much as the decision itself. - Systems thinking; you design coordinated solutions that hold up across multiple touchpoints - Comfortable making calls on ambiguous, high-abstraction problems without someone drawing the boundaries for you - Evidence you've influenced product direction, not just shipped what was asked. We'll ask you to walk us through the why behind a decision, not just the outcome - A natural collaborator who co-leads with PMs and engineers rather than waiting for a brief - Someone who makes things look good, fast. We need speed of execution alongside strategic thinking. HOW WE HIRE We value drive, intelligence, and current ability over pedigree. We care most about how you think and work right now. Our aim is to get an offer out within 2-3 weeks of a first conversation. The process: 1. Interview with our Recruiting team 2. Home task, followed by a discussion with our product team. The task is built from a real problem we're actively working through, time-boxed to a few hours; we're grading your reasoning, not whether you land where we did 3. Team interview 4. Final chat with our Founder WHAT WE OFFER - Highly competitive salary + stock options - Pension plan with Nest - Health insurance (including Optical and Dental cover), Life Assurance - Enhanced parental leave - Weekly Deliveroo allowance - 29 days of holidays (on top of Bank holidays) - Flexible working hours - Hybrid work 3 days a week in our London (Liverpool Street) offices. - Cycle to Work scheme, Electric vehicle scheme