Senior Product Designer

About the Role

Acorn PLMS is looking for a Senior Product Designer who thrives on solving meaningful product challenges, uses research to build a strong point of view, and maintains an exceptionally high standard of craft. This role is suited to someone who can independently drive discovery, design, and delivery within an established product direction.

About Acorn

Acorn PLMS is building an AI-powered Performance Learning Management System aimed at reshaping corporate learning. The platform is designed so that learning directly improves workplace performance, helping organisations guide people through the capabilities required for their roles. Acorn is used by over 3 million active learners worldwide.

Location

This is an in-office position for candidates based in Sydney, Australia. The office is in Sydney CBD (Town Hall), and applicants must be within commuting distance.

Role Overview

This position is not about taking briefs passively, and it is not a pure strategy role either. Product direction, design philosophy, and guiding principles are owned by the Director of Product Design, with whom you will work closely. Within that framework, you will be responsible for defining the problem, running discovery, shaping the solution, and collaborating directly with Product Management and Engineering to ship high-quality outcomes. Judgement, insight, and independent thinking are central to success in this role.

Capabilities and Expectations

Acorn defines capability expectations across five areas, with four internal proficiency levels: Foundational, Developing, Proficient, and Advanced. For this role, the focus is on developing and applying strong capability in the following areas:

• Product Strategy, Outcomes & Trade-offs: Work within an established strategy, make thoughtful trade-offs, and align decisions to product goals and constraints.
• Insight Synthesis & Problem Framing: Bring together qualitative, quantitative, and domain inputs to shape clear problem definitions and practical learning plans.
• Complex Interaction Design & Quality: Resolve ambiguous interaction challenges, set the quality bar for the domain, and improve accessibility and usability in a systematic way.
• System Evolution & Reuse: Use Figma and the design system expertly, maintain pattern consistency, and collaborate with engineering to keep design and code aligned.
• Stakeholder Alignment & Facilitation: Work directly with cross-functional partners, handle disagreements constructively, and keep decisions moving without needing heavy oversight.

Key Responsibilities

• Take full ownership of substantial design problems from discovery through to shipped solutions, working within the direction set by the Director of Product Design.
• Plan, conduct, and synthesise your own research, including interviews, usability testing, and analysis, and turn those findings into a clear product point of view.
• Design for complex product scenarios such as permissions, role-based views, empty states, error handling, and edge cases, while preparing clear handoff materials for engineers.
• Maintain a strong standard of interaction, visual, and content quality, and make sound decisions when problems are unclear or ambiguous.
• Develop and refine design system patterns in Figma, ensuring consistency across user journeys and close alignment with implementation.
• Collaborate independently with Product Management and Engineering throughout delivery, keeping trade-offs transparent and the experience protected.
• Apply design principles with judgement, knowing when a principle can flex and when it must be upheld to preserve coherence.
• Review delivered work against the intended design, identify mismatches, and push for quality improvements before and after release.

Required Experience

• Strong product design experience with a portfolio that shows end-to-end ownership of complex work, including research, interaction design, prototyping, and delivery.
• Proven experience designing SaaS or other technology products, with a solid grasp of multi-user, permission-based systems.
• Advanced proficiency in Figma, including components, prototyping, variables, and contribution to a shared design system.
• Hands-on research capability, especially the ability to plan, run, and moderate user interviews independently and translate findings into decisions.
• The ability to absorb and apply a defined design philosophy consistently across different problems while using sound judgement.
• Comfort with ambiguity inside a defined scope, and the habit of forming hypotheses early and moving work forward proactively.
• A strong bias toward action and self-direction, with the ability to identify and pick up important work without waiting to be asked.
• Genuine enthusiasm for design craft and a habit of continuing to learn about UX, technology, and product trends.
• Experience in HR tech, learning technology, or another complex enterprise environment is helpful but not essential.

AI Fluency

Acorn uses AI broadly across the business and expects this role to embrace that mindset. The team is particularly interested in designers who can use AI to strengthen research synthesis, explore design variations, and speed up early evaluation without replacing human judgement or craft.

• Use AI to identify patterns across usability sessions, support feedback, and analytics so decisions can be made faster and with more confidence.
• Apply AI-assisted design tools to explore concepts, generate alternatives, and test ideas earlier in the process.
• Use AI to remove repetitive work so more time is available for research, judgement, and high-quality design craft.

Tooling Note

AI design tools are expected to complement, not replace, strong product design fundamentals. Fluency with tools such as Claude Design is not a substitute for deep Figma and design system expertise. During the hiring process, candidates will be asked to explain what they have built, which tools they use regularly, and what results those tools have helped them achieve.

Why Join Acorn PLMS?

• You will work on important design challenges in a product used by more than 3 million active learners globally.
• You will design for a platform at the intersection of learning, performance, and emerging AI technology.
• You will partner closely with the Director of Product Design, allowing you to focus your energy on research and craft.

Workplace Requirements

Acorn operates as an office-first company, with most work done from local offices. The team values in-person collaboration and expects employees to work from the office the majority of the time, if not all of the time. Candidates must have full working rights in Australia, as visa sponsorship is not available.

Recruitment Process

Acorn is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace and aims to make its hiring process fair and accessible. Candidates are encouraged to request any accommodations they may need during the application or interview stages.

About Acorn

Acorn is a learning and performance platform supporting over 3 million active learners worldwide. The company is focused on helping people grow professionally and personally, and is continuing to expand its impact.