VP of Product Design and Research

About Us

At Ankorstore, we believe that local independent retailers have a great impact on the soul of our cities and villages, and we believe that they will flourish even more if they are provided with great tools and exceptional shopping conditions. With this in mind, we are building the largest marketplace that connects authentic European brands with thousands of independent retailers. We are extremely proud to be able to support these amazing entrepreneurs every day. 

Ankorstore was founded in 2019 and has recently closed a 250 million € Series C funding. We have over 450 employees, already present in 28 countries and want to continue to scale strongly. We are convinced that proximity is key to bring the most of our value to our business partners and this is why we want to build a team of talent in Europe.

Reporting to the CPO, you will be the one responsible for the global user experience, in charge of all of the Product design team and activities, from strategy and research to production

About your role:

As the VP of Product Design and Research, you will be responsible for the global user experience. For that, you will lead all of the product design and research teams and activities, from strategy to production. 

• Establish the Product Design Strategy & Define the Roadmap

You will work closely with the CPO, to whom you’ll report, to build the product strategy and define what it means in terms of design strategy, roadmap, and prioritization. 

• Build the Team

You will design the team of product designers and researchers that you need, and then you’ll hire it. We already have a small team of mostly freelancers to start. All product designers and researchers will report into you.

You’ll set up with your team all the processes and tools they need to be efficient in their discovery and delivery work. 

• Elevate What Design Means at Ankorstore. 

You care deeply about customers and care about your craft. You will have a strong design vision and imbue design thinking into everything designers and non-designers do at Ankorstore.   

• Marry Product and Brand

Work closely with the Marketing and Brand Design teams to understand what our brand means and suffuse it into the details of every user interaction.

• Deliver

We are growing fast. We need to keep up with that growth. That means building fast, and that means tradeoffs. Sometimes, the experience will be exactly as planned. Other times, we will need to take shortcuts. You will always know how to prioritize to get the best of both worlds: radical growth that finds the right tradeoff between business results and customer needs.

What we are looking for

Strong Design leadership experience

• You have 10+ years experience in Design, and 5+ years of experience as VP of Design or equivalent.
• You have designed both consumers and SaaS experiences.
• You have led an international, remote design team of 20-50 people, to world-class levels of quality.
• You have recruited a design team of up to 20 people, ideally from scratch.
• You have collaborated across the company with other teams like Sales, Growth, Ops, Finance, General Managers, etc.
• You have proven your ability to attract a world-class design team. You are a thought leader and can inspire internally and represent Ankorstore externally
• You have proven your ability to create a product that elegantly solves customer pain points
• You are highly rational and base your decisions based on data.

What’s in for you:

• Unique opportunity to join one of the fastest growing European startups just after series B
• Working with a very ambitious & mission driven team backed by powerful VCs (Tiger Global, Bain Capital) 
• Strong values, a real purpose-driven company, in an international environment
• A highly dynamic environment in a fast scaling company at a stage where you will able to shape things autonomously and participate to the future of the organisation
• A real playground for development with exciting career opportunities, locally or internationally, with strong mentors 
• Competitive compensation
• Location: Europe in one of our market (UK, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France)