Lead Designer, UX Research and Prototyping at QIMA · Madrid

companyDescription
QIMA serves a remarkably diverse client base: from global multi-national brands and retailers to individual entrepreneurs, small business owners, and farmers, spread across every major geography. You will build deep expertise on the specificities and commonalities in their needs and pain points. You will design and lead rigorous discovery and user research practices to sustain decisions at QIMA's scale and global footprint.
This role has an explicit mandate to move QIMA's client digital experience past static mock-ups and into working, clickable, and where useful code-backed prototypes that engineering can build from directly. It requires rigorous discovery and research practice at QIMA's scale, deep fluency in each division's business context, and the ability to build the alignment and business cases needed to make the client experience a compounding enabler of growth rather than a fragmented, service-by-service afterthought.
jobDescription
Key Responsibilities
Know Your Clients
QIMA serves a remarkably diverse client base: from global multi-national brands and retailers to individual entrepreneurs, small business owners, and farmers, spread across every major geography. You will build deep expertise on the specificities and commonalities in their needs and pain points. You will design and lead rigorous discovery and user research practices to sustain decisions at QIMA's scale and global footprint. Understanding how users actually experience QIMA's platforms — where they get stuck, what they ignore, and what earns their trust — is the core of this role: every prototype you ship should be judged first on whether it makes their job easier, not just on how it looks.
Prototype, Do Not Just Mock Up
Static mockups tell us what something might look like. A working prototype tells us whether it actually works. You will be expected to move past Figma screens and into functional, clickable, and where useful, code-backed prototypes that the engineering team can build from, and ship faster because the ambiguity has already been resolved. Your first deliverable on any new problem is something a user can click through and react to, not a static frame.
Set the Bar for Craft
We hold the client digital experience to the standard of the best consumer and enterprise products on the market: obsessive attention to detail, ruthless removal of friction, and a willingness to prototype and discard dozens of directions before committing to one. You do not need to have worked at a specific company to meet this bar. What matters is that you can demonstrate this discipline in your own past work, and bring it to QIMA's client experience.
Build Internal Partnerships
You will build deep fluency in QIMA's business context: how each division operates, where revenue is made, and where growth is constrained. You will use that fluency to ground your design decisions in what actually moves the business, and to bring stakeholders across divisions along with working prototypes and evidence rather than opinions. Working hand in hand with partners in sales, marketing, operations, and finance, you will make the client digital experience a compounding enabler for the company's growth.
Make it Simple
Quality control and compliance are just one part of our clients' supply chains. Their days are fragmented with multiple interruptions, shifting priorities, and decisions made on the go across time zones. You will design an experience that fits how they actually work, saves them time, and surfaces valuable insights at the right moment. For QIMA's intensive, expert users — inspectors, for instance — usability often means density and speed rather than a minimal interface: seeing all relevant options at once and navigating by keyboard shortcut rather than by extra clicks. You will know when to simplify for an occasional user and when to design for speed and control for a power user.
Build for Scale
QIMA's technology vision is to build a modular platform that scales across divisions and an expanding portfolio of services. You will design the client digital experience with that modularity in mind, finding the right balance between catering to clients' specific needs and building for scale. This means making deliberate choices about what is shared, configurable, or specific, and holding that line as the roadmap grows.
Deliver at Pace, Sustainably
QIMA's competitive edge lies in part in its agility and ability to deliver value iteratively. You will champion this approach, breaking down complex problems into actionable, iterative roadmap increments, clearing blockers for your teams, and setting a pace of delivery that matches our ambition for growth. We work hybrid with flexible core hours, so you can structure your week around focused delivery and the collaboration your team needs.
Measure Impact
You will define the metrics that matter for the client digital experience and build the discipline to track them. From portal adoption and task completion rates to time-to-insight and client retention signals, you will connect design decisions to business outcomes. You will use data to prioritise ruthlessly, report progress in terms clients and stakeholders care about, and build the evidence base that earns continued investment in the platform.
AI-Augmented
From discovery to delivery, you will embed AI in our ways of working to accelerate and amplify your impact. You will rethink the solutions we can offer to our customers in the age of widespread AI, using AI tools to build prototypes faster and to raise the bar for how the broader design team works.
qualifications
This is a hybrid role given the level of in-person collaboration with engineering and stakeholders across divisions; if you are based elsewhere in Europe and this could still work, we would still like to hear from you.
Required
Significant experience in UX research, product design, or a role with directly transferable skills, typically around 7 years, with demonstrated ownership of complex, multi-stakeholder design problems from discovery through to a working prototype.
A portfolio that shows working prototypes, not only polished mockups. You should be able to point to instances where a prototype you built directly shaped an engineering decision or unblocked a build.
A demonstrated commitment to UX craft comparable to the best products in the market, and the ability to translate that standard into QIMA's own client experience.
High-growth or scale-up experience: you have operated in environments that demanded startup scrappiness and speed, and you have also felt what it means to design for scale. You know the difference between moving fast and moving recklessly and bring both instincts to the same role.
High agency and ownership: when something is unclear, you define it; when something is blocked, you unblock it. You take initiative and escalate early when something needs a decision, and you hold yourself accountable for outcomes.
Bias for action and an iterative mindset: you prototype, test, learn, and adjust rather than waiting for the perfect plan.
Comfort with prototyping tools that go beyond static design software (for example Figma's interactive features, no-code or low-code prototyping tools, or basic front-end code) so that your prototypes can be handed to engineering with minimal translation loss.
Analytically sharp: you use data to make the case, even when it is imperfect.
You are hands-on across the full workflow, from client interviews and your own data to back up your design choices.
Demonstrably ahead of the curve on AI-augmented design practices: you use it daily, you push its limits, and you actively raise the bar for those around you.
Full professional proficiency in English; clear written and verbal communication.
Based anywhere in Europe. Paris or London is preferred, given the level of in-person collaboration with engineering and stakeholders across divisions, and hybrid work applies there — but candidates based elsewhere in Europe are very much encouraged to apply.
additionalInformation
All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.