Design Director Experience – Shaving & Grooming

Job Title

Design Director Experience – Shaving & Grooming

Job Description

Define the Next Era of an Icon

In 1939, Philips revolutionized personal care by inventing the rotary shaver. Decades later, we created the at-home IPL market and disrupted the industry again with OneBlade. Innovation is not just our history; it is our baseline.

Today, Philips Grooming & Beauty is entering its most ambitious era yet. We are shifting from selling standalone devices to architecting holistic, data-driven, and sustainable personal care ecosystems. As the Experience Design Director for Shaving Solutions, you will hold the keys to designing a signature experience for our most iconic global portfolio.

Based in Shenzhen, the hyper-accelerated tech capital of the world, you will lead a high-performing, cross-competence design studio team. (Additional location: Amsterdam). You will bridge premium Western  conceptualize, develop and deliver user-experience design with leveraging the world's most advanced manufacturing and digital ecosystem, transforming how millions of people around the globe define their authentic selves.

Strategic Vision, Holistic Execution

This is a high-visibility executive role requiring a "T-shaped" design leader. You will not just manage a team; you will act as a strategic partner to the business, championing the voice of the consumer and challenging the status quo to drive meaningful innovation.

Vision & Strategy

• Translate Vision to Business value: Synthesize deep consumer, market, and cultural insights into a cohesive design strategy for the Shaving category. Partner directly with Business Leaders to turn commercial goals into award-winning creative solutions.
• Orchestrate Ecosystems: Move beyond the physical object. You will orchestrate end-to-end user journeys that seamlessly integrate physical hardware, digital UX/UI (IoT/Connected Health), premium packaging, and in-store/digital communication.

Creative Leadership & Delivery

• Elevate the Craft: Oversee the creative output of a multidisciplinary team. Champion the Philips Design Language System while pushing the boundaries of CMF (Color, Material, Finish), ergonomics, and sustainability.
• Concept to Reality: Drive operational excellence. Lead your team through advanced development, platform creation, and technical realization, ensuring premium design quality is maintained through to engineering and final implementation.

People & Stakeholder Management

• Unify Distributed Teams: Lead, coach, and cultivate a diverse design team that spans locations and time zones. You excel at building a shared studio culture, maintaining high alignment, and fostering psychological safety across hybrid and remote environments.
• Influence the Matrix: Act as a powerful advocate for design. Communicate complex design decisions with narrative flair, aligning and inspiring internal executive stakeholders, international cross-functional peers, and external partners alike.

Who You Are

You are an ambitious, collaborative design executive who thrives at the intersection of physical hardware, digital interaction, and lifestyle trends. You possess a unique blend of analytical depth and creative intuition.

• The Track Record: 10+ years of progressive experience in industrial design, interaction design, or product-service design, with a proven history of launching complex, high-volume consumer electronic devices (ideally small or stand-alone electronic personal care/wellness products).
• The "T-Shaped" Edge: Deep expertise in your core design discipline, coupled with the broad capability to orchestrate full E2E experiences across Product, UX, UI, communication and Service Design.
• Manufacturing & Agile Savvy: Comprehensive knowledge of taking a product from a sketch all the way through tool validation and manufacturing. Experience leading design within Lean/Agile development frameworks is highly valued.
• Cultural & Trend Agility: A sharp eye for global trends in fashion, art, technology, and lifestyle. You understand how visual languages impact diverse markets and cultures.
• Credentials: A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Product Design, Industrial Design, Interaction Design, or a related field.
• Language: Professional fluency in English is mandatory. Fluency in Mandarin is a distinct advantage given the Shenzhen location, but not a barrier for the right global leader.

How we work together
We believe that we are better together than apart. For our office-based teams, this means working in-person at least 3 days per week.

This position is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands or Shenzhen, China.

About Philips
We are a health technology company. We built our entire company around the belief that every human matters, and we won't stop until everybody everywhere has access to the quality healthcare that we all deserve. Do the work of your life to help the lives of others.
• Learn more about our business.
• Discover our rich and exciting history.
• Learn more about our purpose.

If you’re interested in this role and have many, but not all, of the experiences needed, we encourage you to apply. You may still be the right candidate for this or other opportunities at Philips. Learn more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion here.