About the role

As Head of Design at 4C Strategies, you will lead a small, distributed team of designers and strengthen our design capability across product experiences, user workflows, and cross-functional collaboration. This is a hands-on leadership role: you are a skilled designer who both leads the team and keeps doing design work yourself, helping the team do their best work. Based in our Stockholm office, you will play a central role in shaping how design contributes to product strategy, customer value, and delivery across our Exonaut platform — our software for readiness and resilience — and related services. This role focuses on our Defence products, designing for armed forces and defence planners.

You will be responsible for building structure, quality, and consistency across the design function — balancing strategic direction with hands-on leadership and operational execution. The role involves close collaboration with Product Management, Engineering, Delivery Consultancy, and customer-facing teams to ensure user-centred, intuitive, and reliable solutions that support mission-critical environments.

As Head of Design, you will support and develop designers, strengthen design processes and governance, and ensure alignment between business priorities, customer needs, and product usability. You will help establish design as a key capability within 4C’s continued growth journey.

The role at a glance

• Location: Stockholm, Sweden (hybrid working).

• Travel: mainly regular travel to our Malmö office, plus 2–3 trips abroad per year (for example to our London, Warminster, or Orlando offices).

• Reports to: Chief Technology & Product Officer (CTPO).

• Team: a team of 3 designers, based in Malmö and Orlando (USA).

• Focus: Defence products, designing for armed forces and defence planners.

• Employment type: full-time, permanent (6-month probation).

Key responsibilities

• Work hands-on as a designer on key Defence product areas, contributing your own craft and raising quality together with the team.

• Lead and develop the team through regular 1:1s, coaching, feedback, and clear development plans, creating growth opportunities for each designer.

• Champion design quality, accessibility, and consistency across products, workflows, and customer-facing experiences.

• Improve design processes, design-system standards, and ways of working across cross-functional teams.

• Partner closely with Product Managers and Engineering to align user experience, technical feasibility, and business priorities.

• Turn customer and user insights — from continuous discovery and research — into intuitive, effective products, and measure success through clear outcomes and shared goals.

• Contribute to product strategy, keeping user-centred thinking at the heart of decisions, and set clear design principles for AI-enabled features (transparency, user control, and safe fallback options).

• Recruit and onboard designers, and support their growth through our design career framework, building an inclusive and collaborative team culture.

About you

You are an experienced design leader who combines deep user-centred thinking with structure, collaboration, and business understanding. You are comfortable operating in complex product environments where balancing user needs, technical realities, and organisational priorities is essential.

You enjoy building clarity and consistency across teams and processes while supporting designers in their growth and development. You are pragmatic, communicative, and motivated by improving both product experiences and ways of working. You lead by example — both doing design work and growing your team — and you measure your success by your team's quality, cohesion, and growth.

We believe you bring

• Experience leading or coaching designers within SaaS, technology, or product-driven organisations.

• A solid understanding of product design, UX, interaction design, and user-centred methods.

• Experience building and improving scalable design processes, systems, and governance.

• Experience collaborating with Product Management and Engineering teams in cross-functional environments.

• Experience developing designers through coaching, feedback, and regular 1:1s.

• Comfortable leading a distributed team across different locations and time zones.

• Clear communication and stakeholder skills, with the ability to build alignment across teams and organisational levels.

• Ability to balance strategic thinking with operational execution in fast-moving environments.

• Good organisational skills and the ability to manage several projects at once.

• High proficiency in English, both written and verbal.

• Fluent Swedish, both written and spoken.

• Swedish citizenship, because this role supports defence work and the successful candidate must pass Swedish security vetting (säkerhetsprövning).

Desirable:

• Experience working with complex B2B platforms or mission-critical software environments.

• Familiarity with design systems and scalable product design practices.

• Experience working in international or multi-disciplinary organisations.

• Experience supporting organisational change and design maturity growth.

• Formal education or training within UX, interaction design, service design, or related disciplines.

You do not need to tick every box. If you meet most of these points and are excited about the role, we would love to hear from you. A few requirements for this role — such as Swedish citizenship and security vetting — come only from the security rules for defence work, not from personal preference.

What we offer

• Occupational pension (tjänstepension).

• Wellness allowance (friskvårdsbidrag).

• Healthcare insurance & healthcare insurance for treatment

• Parental pay

• Vaccinations

• Room to grow into a Director-level design leadership role over time.

• A supportive, collaborative team building meaningful products for mission-critical work.

About 4C Strategies

4C Strategies is a global provider of readiness and resilience solutions, supporting organisations across defence, public sector, corporate, and critical infrastructure environments. Through our Exonaut platform and expert services, we help organisations train, exercise, evaluate, and improve their operational capability and preparedness.

At 4C, we combine technology, expertise, and collaboration to solve complex challenges in mission-critical environments. Our teams work closely together across disciplines to create user-focused solutions that strengthen resilience and operational performance worldwide.

How to apply

To apply, click the Apply today button. We review applications on a rolling basis, so please apply as soon as you can.