Founded in 2002, ELMO Software is the trusted provider of HR technology solutions to 2,000+ mid-sized organisations and more than one million end users across Australia and New Zealand.With a comprehensive suite of ISO-certified solutions that span the full employee lifecycle, ELMO Software is designed to scale as organisations grow. Flexible and configurable, ELMO’s one-stop HRIS fits to your specific needs and workflows.Through powerful technology, automation, data and analytics, ELMO Software empowers HR professionals to play an integral role in company decision making.

Life & Culture...

At ELMO you will be joining an epic team with the opportunity to make a big impact. We foster an authentic, collaborative, fun working environment and being an ELMOnian means you're part of an amazing team that will push you to grow, support you with challenges and allow you to shine. Some of our benefits include:

- Paid Parental leave - 12 weeks primary, 6 weeks secondary
- Birthday leave, YOU day each year, as well as connecting people leave (up to 2weeks working from anywhere)
- Inhouse Learning and Development initiatives
- ELMO Social and Diversity clubs
- Mental Health/EAP programs
- Flare Perks (great discounts, novated leasing, salary sacrifice)

Our values:

- Reimagine What's Possible- We believe innovation is human at its core. By staying open, fearless, and adaptive, we continuously push boundaries - while keeping people at the heart of everything we do.
- Obsess over Customers– Everything we do is designed to positively impact our customers.
- Help Others Thrive- Be they colleagues, communities or customers, we champion ways to help others thrive.




- Be Fearlessly Optimistic- We bring unwavering positivity to any challenge, as we know it will drive meaningful change.

Please note: Our internal Talent Acquisition team has got this covered, we’re not open to using an agency for this role.

Reporting to the VP, Product, the Head of Design is the senior design leader accountable for design discipline, the ELMO design system, and design quality across ELMO's product organisation. Product Designers and Senior Product Designers report directly to this role and are matrixed into cross-functional squads, mirroring how Product and Engineering operate. In the AI-Native model, the Head of Design ensures that AI-accelerated design generation translates into measurable improvements in usability, accessibility, and design system fidelity, not just faster pixels. ELMO operates a product-led model.

Product owns whether we build the right thing for the customer (desirability) and whether the business can support it commercially (viability). Engineering owns whether it can be built sustainably (feasibility). Design owns whether the experience works for users (usability). The Head of Design owns the standard, the system, and the people that make ELMO's interfaces usable, accessible, and on-brand and ensures design serves all squads equitably as an independent discipline.

Product research (should we build this,



will customers pay for it, does it solve a real problem) sits with Product. UX research (does the experience meet usability benchmarks, do users understand it, where do they get stuck, are accessibility outcomes met) sits with Design and is owned by the Head of Design.

Multi-modal experience design is a first-class accountability of this role. As ELMO brings AI-native capabilities into the platform (conversational, agentic, and generative UI), the Head of Design owns the rules for how these modalities compose with traditional UI; when each is the right choice, how they hand off to one another, and how state and context flow across modes to produce a coherent, usable product. Conversational AI is currently the most prominent of these modalities and a key formative challenge for the discipline.

This role operates at approximately 35% tactical / 40% strategic / 25% management. The Head of Design is hands-on by design and directs design personally on the highest-leverage strategic initiatives (typically the most novel or risky AI surface in any given quarter), holds the bar through craft, and leads the discipline through standards, the design system, and direct development of the team.

The core responsibilities of the Head of Design includes but is not limited to:

Accountable for design culture across the organisation: usability rigour, accessibility-first thinking, design system discipline, and continuous improvement in AI-native design practice.

Owns the design career ladder: role definitions, promotion criteria, and career development frameworks for all design roles (Product Designer, Senior Product Designer).

📌 Head of Design (Australia)
🏢 ELMO Software
📍 Australia