Company Description

As a global key player in yeasts and fermentation, Lesaffre designs, manufactures and markets innovative solutions for Baking, Food taste & pleasure, Health care and Biotechnology.

Family group born in northern France in 1853, now a multi-national and a multicultural company, Lesaffre is committed to working with confidence to better nourish and protect the planet.

In close collaboration with its clients and partners, Lesaffre employs 11 000 people in more than 50 countries.

Lesaffre achieves a turnover of 3 billion euros.

Job Description

The purpose of the position is to provide guidance, expertise, and leadership in User Experience and User Interface Design at Group level with a clear focus on measurable business value. The Lead Design will define and execute the User Experience vision and strategy across Lesaffre’s Digital, Data & Tech products, improving outcomes such as adoption, conversion, task efficiency, operational productivity, and user satisfaction.

Partnering with Product and Tech teams, the Lead Design will translate business priorities into user-centric product strategies, define value hypotheses, and drive measurable improvements through structured discovery, shared standards and scalable delivery practices. The role is accountable for design contribution to value creation, by setting and tracking UX/product success metrics (e.g. time-to-task, task success rate, decrease in support tickets,…). This includes establishing a measurement framework in partnership with Product leadership.

The Lead Design ensures, directly or indirectly, that user needs are properly captured, journeys and interactions are designed, and that UI, UX writing, navigation components and the Group-level design system are consistently applied and progressively evolved across the DD&T portfolio.

Given the diversity of contexts, maturity levels and geographies across Lesaffre, the Lead Design will drive a progressive rollout of UX standards, discovery practices and design system adoption, prioritizing the highest impact products and teams first. This approach will combine clear Group-level principles with pragmatic local adaptation, ensuring sustainable adoption of design practices over time.

She/he will have the following responsibilities:  

• Define and continuously evolve the Group User Experience and User Interface design strategy:
  • Outcome-driven and measurable (conversion, efficiency, productivity, satisfaction)
  • Aligned with business objectives and DD&T vision
  • Coherent with Lesaffre’s DNA
  • Define and scale design principles, guidelines and best practices to guide user-centred products and services, in close collaboration with Product Managers and the Head of Product
  • Ensure progressive rollout and consistent implementation of standards through enablement (playbooks, templates) and lightweight governance rituals
• User research, discovery and insights: 
  • Conducting or overseeing user research and product discovery activities to gain a deep understanding of user context, needs, pain points and behaviours across external audiences (customers/consumers) and a highly diverse internal user base, across countries and maturity levels
  • Using research and discovery findings to translate insights into personas and journeys, inform design decisions, and support the validation of problem-solution fit and product/value fit at scale
• Design production & quality (UX/UI, content, design system): 
  • Ensure production-ready UX/UI deliverables (information architecture, flows, interaction/UI specs, prototypes) and consistent quality across key journeys
  • Define and scale the Group design system (components, content guidelines,..) to ensure consistency and speed across products
  • Establish DesignOps practices to scale design delivery (ways of working, tooling, reusable templates, contribution model, and lightweight governance) in close collaboration with Product and Tech
  • Ensure UX writing and interface content are clear, on-brand and support efficient task completion
  • Plan and oversee usability validation and use evidence (qualitative + metrics) to drive continuous improvement
• Discovery-to-delivery acceleration (operating model):
  • Implement and promote a dual-track ways of working with Product Managers and Tech Leads to shorten time-to-value and reduce risk early
  • Establish a continuous discovery cadence aligned with roadmap cycles (touchpoints, framing, hypothesis validation)
  • Define design readiness criteria and lightweight rituals to enable smooth delivery (e.g., reviews, decision logs)
  • Reduce friction through standardized collaboration between Design, Product and Tech (shared templates, design system usage)
• Operational Coordination with stakeholders:
  • Collaborating with product development teams to operationally deliver UX and UI designs
  • Collaborate with the Head of Product and Product managers to operationally organize the Product design work for DD&T product.
  • Supporting the DD&T Transformation Directors in integrating User Experience design and user-centric thinking into digital initiatives and governance
  • Work closely with “Digital Experience team” to make sure that User Experience Design is included in change, communication, and training program.
  • Communicate design decisions, design changes and requirements through presentations and other documentation where required.
• Maintain a competitive and market watch on digital experiences and design practices, and proactively propose opportunities to improve value, speed and quality across the DD&T portfolio.
• Build a lean and scalable design capability (vision):
  • Contribute to defining the target design operating model and resourcing approach aligned with DD&T ambitions (internal capabilities and partners)
  • Help structure and steer a network of external service providers to support User Experience Design objectives

There is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ candidate. Lesaffre is a place where you can grow and in which whatever background you come with will be a plus. If you feel excited about the position, we strongly encourage you to apply even if you meet only two-third the requirements.

• At least one previous experience in a Design Lead role
• 7+ years of experience leading end-to-end design practices (discovery, delivery)
• Ability to operate at both strategic and hands-on levels, with a strong bias for time-to-value and pragmatic execution
• Experience in multi-product/portfolio environments with standardization at scale (design system, governance, templates, enablement)
• Strong foundations in usability, user-centered design and human-computer interaction; strong command of design tools and prototyping
• Ability to leverage qualitative and quantitative data to inform design decisions and track product/UX performance with Product teams
• Strong knowledge of up-to-date product ways of working: dual-track, continuous discovery, Lean UX, iterative validation, outcome-based roadmaps
• Proven ability to link design decisions to measurable business outcomes (conversion, efficiency, productivity, user satisfaction..)
• Experience facilitating business transformation through structured problem definition and solution design (workshops, alignment rituals, decision frameworks)
• Strong stakeholder management skills: clear communication, cross-functional alignment, constructive challenge and influence
• Proven ability to operate transversally in a multicultural, multi-expertise environment, building trusted partnerships to accelerate delivery
• Fluent English; French is a plus

Additional Information

What can Lesaffre International offer you:

• We are a successful family-owned company with long-standing history where people truly matter.
• We promote a sense of fulfilment with a genuine mission: nourish and protect the planet.
• A good working atmosphere, in a brand-new Campus (With a Gym, a Restaurant, …) fostering synergies and teamwork.

At Lesaffre, diversity is a strength that enriches our culture and our teams. We are committed to offering you a work environment where you can thrive, regardless of your background, gender, age or abilities. We encourage all applications, as we believe that diverse perspectives strengthen our ability to innovate and meet the challenges of tomorrow.