Job Description
Senior Product Designer, Platform
Hiring manager: Abi Iyer
Location: Melbourne, Australia
At Zendesk, we create software that powers exceptional customer service. Our easy-to-use and AI-powered tools enable support teams to resolve issues quickly and efficiently. By keeping the customer at the center of the experience, our products help businesses build personal connections and deliver seamless support across email, chat, social, and phone.
Who we’re looking for:
We are looking for a Senior Product Designer to help lead design for our Foundational and Core Platform team in Melbourne. This team is responsible for the most critical pillars of the Zendesk experience: the flagship features and core infrastructure that millions of people interact with every day.
In this role, you won’t just be designing features. You’ll be shaping how the entire Zendesk ecosystem functions, working at the intersection of vision and execution. You’ll translate complex workflows into intuitive, human-centered experiences that scale globally, and you’ll be a senior voice in our APAC Design organization, raising the craft bar across the team.
You’re also fluent in the age of AI. You understand that designing for AI products is its own discipline (agent behaviors, tool use, streaming, trust and error states for non-deterministic systems) and you bring real opinions on what good looks like. You use AI as a craft tool too, prototyping in code with agentic IDEs, not just dragging frames around in Figma.
What you will get to do every single day:
Lead design for multi-quarter platform initiatives that span teams, owning the work from problem framing to ship.
Define design direction for ambiguous platform problems where the right question hasn’t been asked yet.
Design AI-native interactions across the platform: agent workflows, tool-use surfaces, streaming and partial states, trust and transparency patterns for systems that don’t always behave the same way twice.
Prototype in code using agentic IDEs (Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent) when a static Figma mock can’t answer the design question. Use the medium that fits the problem.
Translate technical complexity and intricate workflows into elegant, scalable platform experiences.
Raise the craft bar across the squad through critique, pairing, and informal mentorship of designers earlier in their career.
Influence the product roadmap by bringing design insight, customer evidence, and systems thinking to PM and Engineering leadership.
Partner with our Design Systems team to evolve and contribute platform patterns, not just consume them.
Use research, journey mapping, and Jobs To Be Done frameworks to ensure we are solving real problems for our customers.
What you bring to the role:
7+ years of professional product design experience, ideally within enterprise-grade software or complex SaaS platforms.
A track record of shaping platform-level patterns that outlived the project, and a passion for building foundational tools.
A point of view on AI-native interaction design, with examples of patterns you’ve shipped or strongly argued for. Not “we added a chatbot,” but interaction-level decisions about how an AI surface should behave.
Comfort prototyping with code-based and agentic tools, not only visual design tools. You know when a Figma file is the right artifact and when a working prototype is.
Working knowledge of the building blocks: context, prompting, tool use, eval loops, and the failure modes that come with non-deterministic systems.
Skepticism alongside enthusiasm. You can tell when AI is the right answer and when it’s a distraction from a clearer non-AI design.
Expert skills in Figma and prototyping tools, with a portfolio that demonstrates a high bar for visual craft and interaction design.
Experience working in a “three-in-a-box” model (Product, Engineering, and Design) to deliver impactful outcomes.
The ability to influence stakeholders and senior partners through clear written and verbal communication, articulating not just decisions but the “why” behind them.
Evidence of mentoring designers or raising team craft in your current or prior roles.
Comfort with strategic ambiguity. You define the problem, not just solve it.
A commitment to building accessible and equitable experiences for a global, diverse user base.
Zendesk is an equal-opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, colour, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
The intelligent heart of customer experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.
Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.
As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.
Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.