Principal Designer

The Trade Desk•New York, NY

9d•$182,800 - $335,200

About The Position

The Trade Desk is hiring a senior individual-contributor design leader to own and evolve its Digital Playbook and modernize the company’s design practice. The role will set standards for how the advertising platform looks, feels, and evolves, ensuring a cohesive and scalable design language as the platform grows and AI changes customer expectations. The position reports to the Senior Director of UX Design and is a core leader of the UX team’s impact. The Principal Design Lead will define and maintain the Playbook’s foundations, style guide, component anatomy, and supporting guidance, and ensure teams adopt it in everyday work. The role partners closely with Product, Product Marketing, Brand, Engineering, Data Science, design technologists, and design leadership to align product direction, brand expression, implementation, and AI-powered experiences. It involves hands-on, high-fidelity design from concept through specification and adoption, as well as presenting vision to senior leadership, mentoring designers, and sharing the company’s design perspective with the broader community. The role also champions practical, AI-native ways of working, applying AI tools in exploration, prototyping, craft, and design-to-build handoff. The successful candidate will help establish repeatable workflows and standards, while maintaining human judgment where it is needed. The position is based at a global technology company with more than 3,000 employees across over 30 offices.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Design, HCI, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
At least 10 years of product design or UX design experience, including enterprise-grade or data-rich applications.
At least 4 years leading high-impact design initiatives or strategic projects across teams or product areas.
Proven experience owning or evolving a design language, style guide, design system, or playbook adopted at scale.
Strong visual and interaction design skills, with a portfolio demonstrating craft, clarity, and user-centered problem solving; provide a viewable portfolio link or access instructions with the resume.
Experience integrating brand and product and partnering effectively with Product Marketing and Brand teams.
Deep, hands-on fluency with AI tools for design exploration, prototyping, and workflow, including examples of changing how a team works.
Strong command of Figma and modern prototyping tools for fast, high-fidelity exploration at multiple levels of fidelity.
Experience partnering with design technologists or engineers to connect design foundations to implementation.
Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, executive presence, and experience presenting vision and direction to senior leadership.
Experience working in cross-functional teams and influencing outcomes through collaboration, systems thinking, and storytelling.
Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity and alignment in complex, fast-moving environments.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree preferred.
Familiarity with AI-powered experience design, including trust, explainability, and error-handling patterns.
Familiarity with advertising technology, programmatic platforms, or campaign optimization tools.
Published thought leadership, talks, or case studies on design systems, design modernization, or AI-enabled design practice.

Responsibilities

Own, define, maintain, and evolve the Digital Playbook, including design foundations, style guide, component anatomy, and supporting guidance.
Set standards and principles for consistent, clear, high-craft design, and ensure the Playbook is adopted in daily work and responds to product change.
Translate ambiguous product and brand needs into clear, usable design guidance.
Partner with the Director leading Core Platform Evolution to align the Playbook with platform direction.
Guide product design language evolution to unify the experience, reduce fragmentation, and address quality gaps across the platform.
Identify shared patterns and align teams on best practices for coherence and usability.
Lead hands-on, high-fidelity design of foundational elements from concept through detailed specification and adoption.
Help define the structure and scalability of a modern design system that supports designers and builders.
Partner with the Design Technologist to connect design foundations and patterns to code and implementation.
Keep the design system, Playbook guidance, components, and implementation aligned as they evolve.
Partner with Product Marketing and Brand to integrate brand expression into the product intentionally and consistently.
Build a shared visual and narrative language connecting the company’s messaging with the platform experience.
Present design vision and direction to senior leadership using compelling storytelling.
Collaborate with the AI experience design lead to translate AI vision into consistent Playbook patterns, standards, and guidance.
Ensure product language, components, and visual conventions support assistive, predictive, generative, and agentic AI capabilities cohesively and trustworthily.
Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Data Science on the evolution of platform standards and AI capabilities.
Use AI tools hands-on for exploration, prototyping, craft, and design-to-build handoff, and share effective practices across teams.
Help evolve design, product, and engineering workflows to improve speed and quality.
Establish repeatable standards and practices for AI-enabled workflows, and guide teams on where AI should be used and where human judgment should remain involved.
Set craft standards for visual and interaction design across the UX organization.
Provide critique and design direction to help teams apply the Playbook and improve their work.
Mentor designers in systems thinking, visual craft, storytelling, and AI-enabled ways of working.
Lead visibly through hands-on design work and foster shared responsibility for design quality.
Share perspectives on design modernization, product-brand integration, and AI-enabled design at industry events and in the broader design community.
Help position The Trade Desk as a leader in cohesive, modern, customer-centered product design in adtech.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision healthcare, with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents.
401(k) plan with company match.
Short- and long-term disability coverage.
Basic life insurance.
Well-being benefits.
Reimbursement for certain tuition expenses.
Parental leave.
Sick time of 1 hour per 30 hours worked.
Vacation time for full-time employees: up to 120 hours through the first year and 160 hours thereafter.
Around 13 paid holidays per year.
Opportunity to purchase company stock at a discount through the Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
Employees may be eligible for stock-based compensation grants based on employee and company performance.
Other compensation may include variable compensation-based incentives and commissions.