Are you a Product Designer who does your sharpest work when handed a real problem and trusted to run with it, who treats research as the route to a point of view rather than a box to tick, and who holds a high bar on craft? We’d love to hear from you.

About Acorn

At Acorn PLMS, we are on a mission to transform the corporate learning experience. Our cutting-edge Performance Learning Management System (PLMS) software is powered by AI and designed to ensure that what people learn directly contributes to their exceptional performance in business. Corporate performance and learning need a revolution, and Acorn PLMS is the antidote. We are the only solution that guides learners step by step to master the specific capabilities required for their roles, ultimately accelerating organisational performance.

Location

We are open to individuals based in Sydney: this is an in-office role.

Role Overview

You’ll work from a feature brief, not a blank page. Product direction is set by the Director of Product Design and Product Management. Within it, you own the design of the features you’re given, from discovery through to shipped experience, making the design decisions that shape how they work and partnering closely with Product Management and Engineering to deliver them.

We’re looking for someone who brings sharp craft and sound judgement to every feature they touch.

Our Capabilities Framework

We use Acorn at Acorn. Our managers and staff align on the 5 capabilities needed for each role and the level expected, using our Acorn AI tool to keep this consistent across the business. The 4 levels are Foundational, Developing, Proficient, and Advanced.

These are the 5 key capabilities for this role and the level expected:

1. Product Strategy,



Outcomes & Trade-offs (Developing)

Works within the product direction and feature brief they are given, and makes sound design-level decisions inside it: flows, states, defaults, and permissions behaviours. Identifies risks to the outcome early and escalates when the evidence challenges the brief.

2. Insight Synthesis & Problem Framing (Proficient)

Triangulates qual, quant, and domain knowledge into crisp problem framing. Uses insight to prioritise design effort and stop low-value work. Establishes reliable validation practices for the features they own.

3. Complex Interaction Design & Quality (Proficient)

Holds the quality bar on the features they own. Resolves ambiguous interaction problems with solid rationale. Improves accessibility and usability systematically, not incidentally.

4. System Evolution & Reuse (Proficient)

Highly skilled across Figma and the design system. Owns key patterns, ensures parity between design and code with Engineering, and balances consistency with product needs without creating fragmentation. Treats the system as a living asset, not a static library.

5. Stakeholder Alignment & Facilitation (Proficient)

Runs design work directly with Product Management and Engineering downstream of briefing, without needing to be chaperoned. Navigates disagreement while maintaining trust and momentum.



Aligns partners on cohesive experience decisions and keeps trade-offs visible.

Key Responsibilities:

- Own the design of significant features end to end, from discovery through to shipped experience.
- Plan, run and synthesise your own research, including user interviews and usability testing.
- Design for real-world complexity: permissions, role-based states, empty states, error handling and edge cases.
- Hold a high standard on interaction, visual and content craft.
- Own and evolve design system patterns in Figma, with parity in code.
- Work closely with Product Management and Engineering through delivery.
- Apply the platform’s design principles consistently.
- Review implementations against design intent and push for quality fixes.

Required Experience:

- Substantial Product Design experience with a portfolio that demonstrates end-to-end ownership of complex problems: research, interaction design, prototyping, and delivery. We want to see the problem you were given, the calls you made, what you killed, and why, not only the final screens.
- Significant experience designing SaaS or technology products. This is not negotiable: you should be fluent in the complexity of multi-user, role-based, permission-driven software.
- Deep working knowledge of interaction design and usability principles, with an eye for detail to match. You notice when spacing, hierarchy or type are slightly off, and you know why it matters to the person using it.
- Expert across the whole of Figma: component-based design, advanced prototyping, variables, and hands-on contribution to a shared design system. Design systems experience is a hard requirement, n

📌 Senior Product Designer (Sydney)
🏢 Acorn
📍 Sydney