We're looking for a user interface expert to grow our team.

Background

Bone is a Melbourne based independent digital agency that builds better, from the inside out.

We deliver from strategy to execution by going in deep to shape, build and adapt digital platforms. By putting real people and living data at the heart of our work, we move users and take businesses further, faster. Being a boutique, high-quality, value-based strategic digital partner is Bone’s reason for being.

And we’re looking for a Design Lead to help us deliver on that vision—and push it further.

This is a senior, hands-on leadership role for a UX-strong designer who can own the design direction across client engagements, lead and mentor our Senior UI Designer, and contribute to shaping how Bone presents and wins work.

You'll bring strategic design thinking alongside the craft to back it up.

Top Level Expectations

You'll set the design direction across projects, bringing strategic thinking to every engagement from discovery through to delivery.

You'll lead and mentor the Senior UI Designer, creating the conditions for great work and growing capability within the team.

You'll be confident leading client conversations in workshops, presentations, and proposals, representing Bone's design thinking with clarity and conviction.

You'll bridge UX and UI, ensuring continuity and quality across the full design experience, not just your own output.

You'll contribute to how Bone shapes, pitches, and wins work, bringing a design perspective to proposals and helping articulate our value to clients.

You'll help build the design practice itself, the tools, processes, rituals, and standards that make the whole team better.

Part of the Team

You’ll be asked to fit within our established Shape, Build and Adapt workflow that stretches across our Strategic, Design, Production and Development teams. You will be required to pro-actively be part of the entire process. We want our team members to lean in, support and lift up the other parts of our business wherever possible.

You’ll lead from within our cross-functional team, working alongside Development and Production to deliver thoughtful, beautiful, and effective digital experiences. This isn't a removed leadership role — you'll be in the work, setting the standard, and making critical design calls across the project lifecycle, from early exploration through to post-launch iteration.

You'll manage, mentor and grow the design team, providing clear direction, constructive feedback, and the kind of leadership that helps people do their best work.

You'll be a key voice in client relationships, comfortable presenting strategy, facilitating workshops, and communicating design decisions with confidence.

We want someone who is curious, generous with their thinking, and motivated by great outcomes. Someone who can confidently hold their own in critique, advocate for better ways of working, and help elevate our capabilities.

UX + Design Direction

Develop, define and own Bone's design direction — establishing the standards, vision, and point of view that shapes how the agency communicates its design approach to the market.
Lead the UX process across client engagements, from discovery and research through to information architecture, journey mapping, and wireframing, ensuring design decisions are grounded in user needs and business outcomes.
Set and communicate design direction across projects, establishing a clear vision that the wider team can execute against with confidence.
Review and elevate design output across the team, providing clear, constructive critique that raises the quality of work and builds capability.
Collaborate closely with the Senior UI Designer to ensure continuity between UX thinking and interface execution — from wireframe to final UI.
Apply data-driven thinking to design decisions, using insights, analytics, and user research to inform strategy and validate direction.
Champion accessibility, usability, and performance as non-negotiables across every engagement.

Workflow + Collaboration

Lead design across Bone's Shape, Build and Adapt framework owning the design workstream from discovery through to delivery, ensuring quality and consistency at every stage.
Drive proposal and pitch development from a design perspective, contributing to how Bone scopes, presents, and wins new work, and helping articulate the value of great design to prospective clients.
Working with production to manage the design team’s workload and output across active projects, providing clear direction, timely feedback, and the support they need to deliver their best work.
Working with Production to align design capacity and resourcing across projects, flagging risks early and keeping delivery on track.
Lead client-facing design presentations and workshops with confidence, translating complex design thinking into clear, compelling narratives.
Use and champion Figma as the team's primary design environment, setting standards for file structure, documentation, and collaborative ways of working that scale across the team.
Contribute to how Bone continuously improves its design process, identifying friction points, proposing better ways of working, and helping embed those changes across the team.

Continuous Learning

Lead internal design rituals, retros, critiques, workshops, and reviews, creating a culture of honest feedback, shared learning, and continuous improvement.
Stay ahead of industry trends across UX, UI, design systems, accessibility, motion, and emerging tools, bringing relevant thinking back into the team and into client work.
Actively explore how AI-assisted design and prototyping workflows can improve Bone's efficiency, creativity, and output quality and help the team adopt what works.
Lead client-facing design presentations with authority, shaping how Bone talks about its design thinking and demonstrating the strategic value of our approach.
Contribute to Bone's reputation as a design-led agency — through the quality of the work, the strength of the thinking, and the way the team shows up for clients.

Key Selection Criteria

UX Expertise

4–6+ years of experience designing for web, digital product, or ecommerce environments, with a strong UX foundation and the UI fluency to direct and review interface work confidently. Agency experience is strongly preferred.
A portfolio that demonstrates both strategic design thinking and craft, showing how you've led design direction across complex, multi-stakeholder engagements, not just executed it.
Proven experience leading UX processes end-to-end: research, discovery, information architecture, journey mapping, wireframing, and handing off into UI with clarity and rigour.
Strong working knowledge of component-based design systems and modular UI thinking — enough to set standards, review output, and have credible conversations with the Senior UI Designer and developers.
Advanced Figma skills, comfortable setting team-wide file standards, leading collaborative working sessions, and reviewing others' files with a critical eye.
Confidence working across accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 AA) and advocating for inclusive design practices across the team.
Experience contributing to proposals and pitches, helping scope design engagements, articulate design value, and present thinking to prospective clients.

Professional Capabilities

A natural leader who brings out the best in the people around them, clear in direction, generous with feedback, and invested in growing others.
Excellent communication skills, able to present complex design thinking to clients, facilitate workshops, and contribute to proposals with confidence and clarity.
Comfortable operating across both the strategic and the tactical, equally at home shaping design direction in a client workshop and rolling up their sleeves to get work across the line.
Strong collaborator across disciplines, able to work fluidly with UX, development, production, and strategy without losing sight of the design vision.
A systems thinker who looks beyond the immediate brief, always asking how the work connects to broader user needs, business goals, and Bone's standards.
Calm under pressure, decisive when it counts, and accountable for the quality of design across everything they touch.
A no-ego, all-in mindset that adds energy to a room, not noise.

You’ll do great work with great people, on projects that matter
Small, tight-knit team that genuinely backs each other
No cookie-cutter solutions – we care about craft
Hybrid-friendly, Melbourne-based, flexible, and human

Bone Digital remote jobs

Design Lead