Principal Product Designer: Interface and Experience(UI/UX)

ABOUT CELLULANT

Cellulant is a pioneering B2B payments technology company based in Africa that powers payment processing for thousands of businesses.

Through a single, simple connection, our payment platform - Tingg - enables businesses to disburse funds and manage their offline or online collections while allowing their customers to pay via mobile money, local and international cards or direct bank payments.

With local acquiring in over 30 markets and supporting 300+ payment methods, Cellulant processes over 240 million transactions annually for market leaders in various sectors such as Airlines, Telecoms, E-commerce, Ride-Hailing, Retail and Remittances.

OUR STORY:

Since our founding in 2003, Cellulant has evolved from a digital content provider into a leading payments platform with a presence in 35 African countries. For more than 20 years, we've built a robust network that integrates multiple payment methods, addressing the unique challenges of Africa’s diverse payment landscape.

We began selling ringtones as a digital content business and quickly realised the need for a more streamlined way to manage payments. This realisation led us to develop a platform that initially allowed customers to check their bank balances and eventually evolved into a comprehensive payment solution. Our journey has seen us partner with more than 1000 businesses, including some of the largest banks and mobile money providers on the continent.

Throughout the years, we've continuously adapted and grown, leveraging our experiences to simplify payments for businesses and consumers alike. Today, Cellulant powers online and offline payment processing allowing businesses to collect payments, send payouts, and accelerate business growth. We’re the payment fabric that makes interoperability possible and stitches Africa together for the global economy.

Read more about us, our group leadership team and our country champions.

OUR VISION:

To enable seamless payments across Africa for businesses, banks and consumers.

JOB TITLE: Principal Product Designer: Interface and Experience

JOB DESCRIPTION:
Role overview: This role sits at the intersection of Product Strategy, Product Development, and Marketing. This role is critical in ensuring that we design and build intuitive products - delivering a seamless experience for our business clients and their end customers. Reporting directly to the VP of Product, the Head of Design is responsible for defining and championing a cohesive vision for user experience, rooted in comprehensive customer and competitor research. This individual will lead the design team with a forward-thinking mindset, leveraging the best-in-class design methodologies, tools, and practices to ensure both exceptional product quality and rapid delivery. The role demands a keen understanding of UX principles, a deep commitment to continuous improvement, and a strategic focus on aligning design with business goals and user needs.

Key Responsibilities:

Shaping the UX Vision:
Define and refine the user experience strategy to align with product and business goals, ensuring seamless, intuitive experiences across all touchpoints.
Leading Research and Insights:
Drive user-centered design through customer and market research, including competitor analysis, user testing, and feedback, to inform relevant, effective design solutions.
Design Methodology Excellence:
Apply design methodologies like design thinking, lean UX, and agile to balance speed and quality, constantly refining processes for better outcomes.
End-to-End Product Design Ownership:
Lead all product design phases—research, ideation, prototyping, reviews, and implementation—ensuring design vision is executed to meet product requirements.
Strategic Roadmap Contribution:
Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to shape strategic roadmaps and align design efforts with business goals while managing multiple priorities and timelines.
Behavior-Driven Design:
Create design solutions that promote healthy financial habits, leveraging user insights and data to deliver meaningful, impactful experiences.
Collaboration Across Teams:
Work closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to ensure alignment between design vision, product goals, and business outcomes, fostering seamless collaboration.
Continuous Innovation:
Stay ahead of industry trends and best practices, incorporating iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Android Material Design, and web design best-practice to deliver innovative, accessible, and high-quality designs.
Scalable Process Development:
Develop and refine scalable design processes that improve team efficiency and maintain high quality and consistency across projects.
Advocate for Quality:
Prioritize work, make tough calls, and uphold design quality, ensuring products meet the highest standards of usability and functionality before release.
Team Communication Excellence:
Review and assist with team-created presentations (PPT) to ensure they clearly look and feel professionally created (like McKinsey or Accenture created it).

What your day-to-day might look like;

User and UX Research -

• Understanding requirements, our customers, competition and industry research, qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
• Usability testing to help validate and refine final designs.
• Conduct design validation sessions with users and stakeholders to reveal deep insights about the user, business needs and technical constraints for determination on how user experience and design(s) should evolve
• Working with designers and researchers to continually refine and evolve the User Experience process.
• Conduct independent research on multiple aspects of products and experiences.
• Making strategic and tactical design recommendations based on usability findings, standard design practices, and internal and external feedback.
• Collect and analyze user behaviour to inform user actions.
• Work on tools to identify points of failure / where customers drop off and put in place interventions to reduce friction.

Working with Product Owners on UX Design,

• Creating sketches, wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes occasionally, but not often on very short notice with an expected turn-around of a day or less. Your job will be to ensure that this gets delivered according to an appropriate schedule, but business needs could force it to be delivered by CoB after being communicated.
• Design Handover, including design guide system, visual designs, icons, illustrations, and other assets and resources.
• Translating business requirements and user needs into tangible interaction designs through detailed user flows and wireframes.
• Use of storyboards/customer journey maps/narrative/wireframes/prototypes of varying fidelity to express how a product or service should behave to deliver capabilities in a way that supports user needs, goals, and workflows.
• Ensure to prioritize User-Centered Design projects, improvements and content as per business priorities.
• Help neaten and make professional powerpoints from the product team - and ensure that you teach them how to do this themselves.
• Create reusable iconography/illustrations that can be used within the organisation by any team.

Owning the design language and making sure that all areas of design adhere to the “Cellulant Design Principles.” You will also be responsible for defining what these are. Working with Designers to improve overall design out across multiple platforms and channels.

Educational and Experience Requirements:

Must have experience:

• Minimum 7+ years of experience in UX Design and with a proven record of experience with various design methodologies..
• With a proven track-record of delivering user-centered solutions across multiple platforms and industries.
• Strong storytelling skills to present design strategies and solutions to stakeholders.

Experience that will count in your favor:

• Having previously led a design function in a digitally focused organization.
• Having previously developed and maintained a design system for digitally focused organization.

Nice to have experience:

• Background in designing for fintech, e-commerce, or highly regulated industries.
• Experience leveraging data analytics and A/B testing to inform design decisions.
• Knowledge of emerging technologies like AI, AR/VR, or conversational interfaces and chatbots.
• Previous experience collaborating with global, distributed teams.

Qualification:

• Experience in creating strategy and designing digital products; most recently focused on Activation, Growth & Onboarding work.
• Experience in leading teams and managing people.
• Experience working with designers, product management, and engineering.
• Experience in user tracking interaction technology - for example: Mixpanel / Google Analytics / Appsee / Localytics / Clevertap, etc.
• Proven track record of delivering successful products.
• Ability to work both independently & collaboratively with other product stakeholders
• Ability to flex between rapid prototyping and pixel-perfect outcomes.
• Good (design/strategy) workshop moderator - with the ability to moderate physical and online/remote sessions.

Skills:

• UX design leader that drives strategic product innovation and relentlessly raises the design bar.
• Experienced with various design methodologies (HCD, UCD, Design Thinking).
• Can organise and run/moderate design workshops.
• An expert communicator at every level with the ability to flex between influencing executives and inspiring team members.
• An emotionally intelligent (EQ) leader that hires and develops the best, growing, and inspiring designers to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
• Great collaborator and team player - you understand design is a team sport, and when we win, we win together.
• Relationship builder that actively develops cross-organisation partnerships, fosters trust and aligns stakeholders.
• Ability to balance data with customer insights to inform design decisions.
• Have some understanding of what it takes to build products for African customers.
• A growth mindset and entrepreneurial spirit that will deliver on our goal to build and operate Africa’s payments platform of choice.
• A powerpoint guru.

Personal attributes:

• Adaptable and Fast-Paced: Works quickly and efficiently without compromising quality, thriving in dynamic environments with shifting priorities and tight timelines.
• Proactive and Resourceful: Takes initiative, drives projects forward, and finds creative solutions to challenges.
• Detail-Oriented: Meticulous in ensuring design quality, consistency, and attention to detail across all outputs.
• User-Centered Mindset: Deep empathy for users and a passion for solving real-world problems through design.
• Collaborative: A team player who thrives in cross-functional environments, fostering strong relationships with Product, Engineering, and other stakeholders.
• Resilient: Able to navigate feedback, iterate quickly, and balance multiple priorities without compromising quality.
• Continuous Learner: Passionate about staying updated with industry trends, tools, and best practices, with a growth-oriented mindset.
• Problem Solver: Analytical and data-driven, with the ability to turn complex challenges into simple, intuitive design solutions.

Why Work For Us?

At Cellulant, transforming payments in Africa isn't just a job; it is our mission. We believe by simplifying the way people pay and get paid; we are accelerating businesses, opening up markets, bridging wealth gaps and connecting Africa to the global economy.

Some exciting things about us...

• We have an Extensive Footprint: We have an office presence in over 10 countries, and our products serve 35 countries across Africa with a global workforce of about 300 employees.
• We believe that innovation is at the Heart of Fintech: Thousands of companies use our technology to deliver seamless payment experiences. Our customers range from various sectors such as Airlines, Telecoms, E-commerce, Ride-Hailing, Retail, to Remittances.
• We Support a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce: We focus on the growth and development of our employees through well-developed, individualised career paths ensuring you reach your full potential in a supportive and delivery-oriented environment.
• We Put our Employees First: We offer market-related compensation, generous personal time off and, markets permitting, medical and life insurance benefits.
• We Seek Collaborative Builders: At Cellulant, we believe that great ideas happen when we come together. We, therefore, nurture a collaborative work environment that challenges, engages and empowers each person to contribute to the growth and success of the business.
• We Solve for Africa’s Digital Economy: We’re solving payment challenges on the continent to create opportunities and accelerate economic growth for all of Africa.