Director, Digital Product Design

HP•San Francisco, CA

1d•Remote

About The Position

HP IQ is HP’s new AI innovation lab. Combining startup agility with HP’s global scale, we’re building intelligent technologies that redefine how the world works, creates, and collaborates. We’re assembling a diverse, world-class team—engineers, designers, researchers, and product minds—focused on creating an intelligent ecosystem across HP’s portfolio. Together, we’re developing intuitive, adaptive solutions that spark creativity, boost productivity, and make collaboration seamless. We create breakthrough solutions that make complex tasks feel effortless, teamwork more natural, and ideas more impactful—always with a human-centric mindset. By embedding AI advancements into every HP product and service, we’re expanding what’s possible for individuals, organisations, and the future of work. Join us as we reinvent work, so people everywhere can do their best work. The IQ Design team creates simple, delightful, and transformative user experiences. We're a team of product designers, design engineers, and systems thinkers exploring what computing looks like when it truly works for people. Our work spans new hardware platforms, new software experiences, and the emerging spaces between them. This is a design-led group. Design doesn't support product development here; it drives it. We have strong opinions about what makes an experience worth using, and we expect leadership that shares that conviction. The person in this role will set the bar for quality, advocate for the user when priorities compete, and make the case (again and again, if needed) that craft is not a nice-to-have. We're looking for a Director of Digital Product Design to lead this team. You'll manage and grow a group of senior designers and design engineers, setting the creative direction for how our software looks, feels, and behaves. This isn't a role where you disappear into strategy decks. You'll stay close to the work, shaping the culture of a team that prototypes fast, cares deeply about craft, and ships products that matter. The right person for this role believes that great design teams are built, not assembled. You'll have significant autonomy to define how your team works together: the rituals, the critique culture, the way ideas move from exploration to production. You care as much about creating the conditions for other people to do their best work as you do about the work itself. You know how to build trust across disciplines, protect creative space, and still hold a high bar for what ships. This is also a role for someone who understands that AI is fundamentally changing how design gets done, not just what we design but how we design it. Your team will be AI-native designers who use tools like Claude, Cursor, and Codex as part of their daily workflow. You should be fluent enough in LLMs and generative AI to have strong opinions about where these tools accelerate great work and where they undermine it.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in digital product design, with at least 3 years managing and growing design teams
A portfolio (or body of work) that demonstrates both personal design excellence and the ability to elevate the output of a team
Proven experience shipping AI-powered or otherwise technically complex consumer products
Working knowledge of LLMs, how they work, what they're good at, where they break down, and a clear point of view on how tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and similar AI-assisted workflows are reshaping the practice of software design
Strong technical fluency. You don't need to write production code, but you should be able to have substantive conversations with engineers about architecture, feasibility, and implementation tradeoffs
Track record of building healthy, high-performing team cultures where people do career-defining work
Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to bring clarity and direction to undefined problem spaces
Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to build conviction across disciplines and levels of seniority

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience prototyping with tools like SwiftUI, React, Origami, or AI or web technologies, enough to evaluate and guide the work of design engineers
Background working in design-led organizations where design and engineering are deeply integrated rather than siloed
Experience designing AI-first systems: memory, personalization, generative interfaces, conversational or agentic experiences
Familiarity with motion design, animation principles, and the craft details that differentiate good software from great software
Experience building or scaling design systems, component libraries, and shared design infrastructure
Interest in the intersection of digital and physical product experiences
Background in creative coding, computational design, or experimental interface work

Responsibilities

Lead, hire, and grow a team of senior product designers, design engineers, and intelligent systems designers working across HP's software experiences
Define and evolve the creative direction for software design across HP's current and future product lines
Build team culture intentionally: critique practices, collaboration norms, and creative rituals that bring out the best in your people
Drive the design point of view. Ensure that experience quality is treated as a first-class priority, not something that gets negotiated away under pressure
Partner with engineering, AI/ML, hardware, and product leadership to ensure design has appropriately shaped the work from strategy through shipping
Create space for deep exploratory work while maintaining accountability for shipping cadence and product quality
Guide the team's adoption of AI-native design workflows, helping designers and design engineers integrate LLMs and generative tools into prototyping, iteration, and production
Mentor leads and seniors, supporting their growth and helping them navigate the ambiguity that comes with designing for emerging technology
Champion design craft across the organization: the motion, the typography, the micro-interactions that make experiences feel alive
Represent the team's work and perspective to senior leadership, translating design decisions into language that builds organizational conviction

Benefits

Health insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Long term/short term disability insurance
Employee assistance program
Flexible spending account
Life insurance
Generous time off policies, including; 4-12 weeks fully paid parental leave based on tenure
11 paid holidays
Additional flexible paid vacation and sick leave