Director of Product Design

Realtor.com Careers•Austin, TX

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Realtor.com® is seeking a Director of Product Design to lead the design systems and product design team for Avail, a fast-growing platform transforming the rental experience. This role will partner closely with senior leaders in Product and Engineering to create and execute a vision for transforming the real estate industry. The Director will be responsible for design decisions and patterns for multiple products, ensuring their adoption by other designers. Key responsibilities include enhancing the design system, improving toolchain connections between design files and code, promoting education and advocacy, and collaborating with cross-functional teams. The role involves managing a team of product designers, driving the strategy and execution of Design Ops tools and processes, and leading as a player-coach, balancing strategic leadership with hands-on design work. The Director will also explore and implement AI-assisted design tooling to optimize workflows and accelerate the design-to-code pipeline. Realtor.com® is committed to empowering people to find their way home through innovation, collaboration, and a supportive culture.

Requirements

10+ years of experience working in the design industry
3+ years of working in a product-led organization
5+ years of providing design direction and mentoring to colleagues in a leadership role
5+ years leading a design systems and product design team
Deep, hands-on experience deploying and maintaining design systems inside active engineering codebases and production environments.
Portfolio demonstrating experience designing individual design tokens and complex components, as well as managing a team roadmap.
Familiarity with leveraging AI design tools, LLMs, or automation workflows.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
Strong visual aesthetic and design point of view
Experience delivering multiple projects simultaneously with cross-disciplined teams
Experience with capacity planning and workload management
Knowledge of Figma, JIRA, and project management tools
Practitioner of user-centric processes and design thinking principles
Exemplifies a "We, Not Me" attitude

Nice To Haves

Informed and strong opinions, loosely held

Responsibilities

Own the Avail design system, defining and evolving components, patterns, and tokens, and driving their adoption.
Set the quality standard for end-to-end product design across Avail, reviewing and guiding feature work for cohesive experiences.
Build accessible patterns and tokens into the system and grow the team's fluency in accessibility.
Partner with engineering counterparts to align components across design and code, and advance a connected toolchain between Figma and the codebase.
Maintain clear, accessible documentation and contribution processes for the design system.
Translate the value of design systems and accessibility into business and quality metrics for stakeholders.
Plan and sequence systems and accessibility work into a prioritized roadmap aligned with engineering and product timelines.
Partner with Brand and Marketing on consistency across external-facing assets, and maintain icon and illustration libraries.
Mentor and manage a team of product designers, supporting their craft and career development.
Partner with wider RDC design leadership on capacity, tooling, and process, ensuring healthy workflows.
Actively design, build, and ship components alongside the team.
Own the hands-on execution of moving designs from Figma into production code.
Explore, pilot, and implement AI-assisted design tooling and workflows.