Senior Product Designer: Enterprise B2B SaaS Admin Console (Figma)

ABOUT THE WORK We are a UK-based B2B SaaS company building a multi-tenant operations platform for enterprise IT and HR teams. The product is a workflow-heavy admin console: approval chains, long-running background processes, audit trails, and role-based access across eight distinct user types, including a partner-facing mode where one operator works across many client organisations. This is not a marketing site and not a mobile app. It is a dense, professional tool that people use for several hours a day, closer to an operations console than to a consumer product. If your portfolio is landing pages and mobile onboarding flows, this is not the right fit and we will not be a good client for you. WHAT MAKES THIS UNUSUALLY WELL PREPARED Most design contracts start with a vague brief. This one does not. We already have: - A written product requirements document with roughly 50 screens specified - Documented user flows for every major journey - Eight defined personas with a role and permission matrix - A component inventory and an initial design token set - Two documented state machines that drive most of the interface - A written design brief covering quality bars for errors, accessibility, responsive behaviour and motion - A complete brand guideline with palette, typography and logo assets You will be designing from specifications, not inventing requirements. That means less ambiguity, faster iteration, and far fewer rounds of "that is not what we meant". It also means we expect a designer who reads carefully and asks precise questions. WHAT WE NEED DESIGNED The complete MVP interface. Broadly: - A design system: colour, typography, spacing, elevation and radius tokens, plus a component library with full variant and state coverage - Dashboards and summary views for several different roles, each seeing a different subset of the product - A queue-based operations board with staged columns and per-item status - Multi-step request creation forms with conditional logic - Approval interfaces, including a lightweight mobile-friendly approval view - Detail views showing long-running processes broken into individual steps, with per-step success, failure and recovery states - Data tables with filtering, bulk selection and export - Settings and configuration sections - Reporting and audit views - Empty, loading, error, partial-failure and permission-denied states throughout DELIVERABLES 1. Design system in Figma. Variables for colour, type, spacing, elevation and radius. Light and dark themes. A theming structure that supports per-customer branding. Components built with auto-layout, component properties and variants, documented for reuse. 2. High-fidelity screens covering the MVP scope, at desktop and tablet widths, with mobile treatment for the small number of views that need it. 3. Full state coverage per screen. Default, empty, loading, error, partial failure, and permission-restricted. We care about these more than most clients do, because the product's most important moments are the ones where something has gone wrong. 4. An interactive prototype for the three primary user journeys, suitable for demonstrating to prospective customers. 5. Developer handoff. Specs and measurements, exported assets, and a token export our engineers can consume directly. Our stack is React with Tailwind, so a token structure that maps cleanly onto that is strongly preferred. 6. Accessibility. WCAG 2.2 AA colour contrast, visible focus states, and a sensible keyboard and tab order documented for complex components. HOW WE WILL WORK Fixed price, three milestones. Async by default, with a weekly call if useful. We review quickly. You will get consolidated written feedback rather than a trickle of scattered comments, and we will not redesign by committee. MILESTONES 1. Design system foundation, visual direction, and three representative screens for sign-off (25 percent) 2. Core workflow screens: the request lifecycle end to end (45 percent) 3. Remaining screens, interactive prototype, and developer handoff (30 percent) Milestone 1 exists so we both find out early whether the collaboration works. If the direction is not right, we part ways cleanly at that point. REQUIREMENTS - 5+ years designing B2B SaaS, enterprise software or internal tools - A portfolio containing at least two data-dense admin or operations interfaces you personally designed - Expert Figma: variables, auto-layout, component properties, variants, and library structure - Demonstrable design system experience, not just screen design - Comfortable working from written specifications - Strong written English, since most of our communication will be async and precise - Available for a sustained block of work rather than occasional evenings NICE TO HAVE - Experience designing for multi-tenant or white-label products - Experience visualising process or workflow status, for example pipelines, queues or job runs - Familiarity with Tailwind or a token-based front-end system TERMS An NDA must be signed before any product documentation is shared. We will send it before the contract starts. Please do not apply if you are unwilling to sign one. All work is original. No stock templates, no AI-generated screens passed off as design work, and no reuse of another client's system. Full ownership of the Figma files and all deliverables transfers to us on final payment. Work stays in our Figma workspace. Nothing goes into a public portfolio without our written permission, and we will discuss what you can show once we launch. BUDGET Our stated budget is 1,000 USD. We know that is at the lower end for this scope, and we would rather have an honest conversation than a disappointing contract. If you believe the deliverables above require more, tell us what you would charge and why, and what you would deliver at 1,000 USD if we scoped it down. We will read those proposals seriously. Applications that simply accept the number without engaging with the scope will be deprioritised. TO APPLY Please answer these in your proposal: 1. Links to two pieces of enterprise B2B admin, dashboard or internal-tool work you personally designed. For each, what was your specific role, and what would you change if you did it again? 2. This product needs light and dark themes plus per-customer branding. Briefly, how would you structure Figma variables and collections to support that without duplicating components? 3. We have roughly 50 specified screens and a fixed budget. How would you sequence the work, and what would you deliver first so we can tell early whether it is going well? 4. What can you complete to a finished standard for 1,000 USD, or what would you actually charge and why? A direct answer counts strongly in your favour. 5. How do you approach error, empty and partial-failure states? Give one concrete example from past work where getting a failure state right materially changed the user experience. Please do not send a generic cover letter. We read the answers first.