What makes product design at Dovetail unique

It’s an exciting time to be a product designer. Evolving from crafting screens, interfaces, and end-to-end experiences, designers are now playing a pivotal role in shaping AI systems and increasingly complex ecosystems. They have more direct influence over business and technology than ever before. This is certainly true for product designers at Dovetail.

Most designers are familiar with the traditional workflow: sketches, wireframes, prototypes, and then the handoff to engineering. But at Dovetail, the role of a designer extends far beyond these boundaries. Our product designers are deeply involved in shaping product strategy, diving into customer discovery, and exploring new possibilities of AI integration.

From integrating smarter AI-powered analysis into our platform to helping users uncover their “aha!” moments, our designers play a crucial role in defining the direction of our product and business and shaping the future of customer intelligence.

What do our product designers say?

We asked five of our talented product designers to reflect on their past year at Dovetail, sharing their roses—biggest wins, thorns—greatest challenges, and what makes their job unique. Here’s what they had to say:

Sarah’s experience: the strategic partner

Rose: My biggest rose working at Dovetail is just the number of ways I am challenged and problems I’m trusted to get stuck into. From running vision workshops to define the entire product direction, to product managing highly complex and technical projects, I am able to grow in a number of different ways. It’s such a joy (and challenge!) being a trusted strategic partner. I love being able to figure out where I can provide value and be trusted to get it done. The breadth of problems I get to work on is really one of my favourite things about working here.

Thorn: The double edged sword! Where I love the fact that we are given such a broad scope, the challenge is that you have to reinvent yourself as a designer week-on-week. It’s a really interesting time to be a designer in the industry, with the AI-shift, and we are really working through what that means for the role every day. It’s a good challenge, and great to be able to play a part in defining what that is, but you have to be very agile and adaptable.

Overall experience: I get to work with the smartest, most wonderful people every single day. Seeing my team grow and work together gives me so much joy, there’s always something new to try and I have grown so much. I’m not the same designer I was two years ago—I’m not the same designer I was a month ago! I love how I am continuously challenged and get to constantly level up.

Sarah Burton is Manager, Product Design at Dovetail.

Mel’s experience: growth team impact

Rose: I would say my biggest rose to date was driving a significant increase in paid conversion for self-serve customers on the Growth team. Through a series of fast-paced experiments, we helped users hit their “aha!” moment earlier. By improving the Free plan experience and adding targeted upsell dialogs, we made value more visible and conversion more natural. It was exciting to see how quickly we could learn, iterate and see real impact!

Thorn: Hardly a thorn but if I had to pick one, it would be juggling the constantly shifting priorities. Working at a fast moving startup like Dovetail means things can pivot in a matter of days. I’ve often found myself mid-way through an initiative before needing to jump onto something new, requiring me to balance two streams of work while keeping both moving forward. It’s a challenge, but one that’s helped me build better context switching and prioritisation skills.

Overall experience: Overall, being a product designer at Dovetail is genuinely fun and full of growth. I’ve been able to stretch well beyond traditional design, into product strategy, experimentation, and even AI. The pace is fast, but the work is rewarding and I feel like I’m constantly evolving alongside the company.

Mel Weiss is Product Designer at Dovetail.

Margaret’s experience: a design lead’s perspective

Rose: Some of the most exciting work for me is when a relatively small improvement ends up having a big impact over time.

As part of bringing smarter AI-enabled analysis into Dovetail earlier this year, I’ve been working with the team on improving transcript summaries, introducing a completely new way of generating them that doesn’t require any manual highlighting or tagging from users.

It’s one of those features that might seem small on the surface, but when placed in the right part of the product, it can make a big difference in how easy and intuitive the experience feels. And it’s been awesome seeing the feedback from users saying how much they’re enjoying using this feature.

Thorn: I don’t think I’ll be particularly original in saying that one of the biggest challenges lately has been the speed of change that new AI gen tools are bringing into design world, and across the whole industry. It’s definitely affected how we work too.

For design, it’s pushed us to take a much more flexible approach, ideas we shape together with engineers, quick prototypes and fast test & learn cycles. It’s forced us to get better at working with a lot of ambiguity, but at the same time, it’s made the work feel really exciting.

Especially in a lead role, there are processes you’d normally repeat over and over, but now it feels like we’re back at the beginning, learning new ways of designing and tech is making a lot of ideas that used to feel “too ambitious” actually possible. It’s a pretty amazing journey to be on.

Overall experience: As a designer, getting to work on a product that helps other product teams build better products has always felt really special to me. When we do our job well, it empowers other teams to do theirs even better and that leads to greater outcomes for their users.

That sense of contributing to something bigger than just our own product is one of the coolest parts of being a designer at Dovetail, and honestly, never gets old :)

Margaret Szwajkiewicz is Manager, Product Design at Dovetail.

Maddy’s experience: integration and evolution

Rose: My biggest win has been leading the design for our newest Salesforce integration. It’s opened the door for our customers to bring richer customer context into Dovetail. A highlight has been building trusted relationships with a close group of design partners and real users, having them in my corner for early feedback has made the work stronger and more meaningful.

Thorn: A big challenge has been navigating how AI has completely reshaped the way research and getting to customer insights can happen. We’ve had to rethink not just how our features work, but how people actually work now. Some of our older features weren’t designed for this new reality, so the challenge is looking forward while making sure nothing goes stale or slows people down as their workflows evolve.

Overall experience: What makes product design at Dovetail unique is how closely we work with every part of the business. We’re not tucked away in a silo, we’re side by side with engineers, with support hearing customer challenges in real time, and with users shaping what we build next. It’s a level of involvement that lets us design not just interfaces, but meaningful experiences that evolve with our users.

Maddy Satterthwaite is Senior Product Designer at Dovetail.

Jess’s experience: designing for continuous discovery

Rose: Channels was one of the main reasons I joined Dovetail a little over a year ago. As our first AI native product, it works quite differently from Projects, and it’s been exciting to explore how it fits alongside qualitative research. That has been a pain point for me as a designer, backing my design decisions with quant in addition to the qual research I have already done. There have been too many wins to count! From improving theme quality and expanding integrations, to making Channels more discoverable across the platform, it has been really rewarding to help shape something from the early days and watch it gain traction.

Thorn: We spent the last six months shipping integrations, which might sound straightforward but turned out to be more complex than expected. Testing revealed challenges we hadn’t anticipated, especially around permissions and access, which made channel setup longer than expected.

But we partnered closely with customers to help resolve issues and better understand their needs. This ongoing collaboration continues to inform our integrations, whether that means expanding the existing set or revisiting some of the rules and logic we initially decided on. It is an interesting time because with LLM models evolving so fast and companies shifting their processes, our requirements are evolving alongside our customers as well.

Overall experience: There’s a lot of growth opportunity at Dovetail if you’re curious and passionate about the mission. You’re trusted to make big and small decisions, shape product strategy with the team, and really be part of the end-to-end journey — from storyboarding a seasonal launch, to shipping the product via code, to supporting GTM comms. Earlier this year, I wanted to lean more into design engineering, and the team has been super supportive. Being a generalist is a strength here, especially in fast-changing times. If you spot an opportunity, it’s yours to run with.

Jess Pang is Lead Product Designer at Dovetail.

Want to redefine your design career?

If you’re excited by the prospect of expanding your design role beyond traditional boundaries, Dovetail offers an environment where ambitious designers thrive. You’ll work directly with customers, contribute to product strategy, and see your designs impact real business outcomes.

The experience demands adaptability and growth mindset, but the rewards—both in terms of career development and daily job satisfaction—make the challenge worthwhile.

Check out our open roles on the careers page.