Principal Guest Experience Designer
About The Position
The Principal Guest Experience Designer is the sole subject matter expert in guest experience design for an assigned enterprise portfolio at Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, with shared accountability for a coherent guest experience across portfolios. As an individual contributor, this role defines long-term experience strategy across interconnected guest journeys, digital products, and channels; exercises considerable latitude and initiative to solve complex, ambiguous challenges; and influences senior leaders to align priorities, roadmaps, and investments within the portfolio and across the broader guest journey. The role leads experience direction for high-impact and transformative initiatives, establishes frameworks and standards for consistent experience decisions, and defines cross-journey measures to assess strategic outcomes. It also provides functional leadership, critique, and mentorship across the design practice while partnering with other principals to resolve cross-portfolio dependencies and evolve design systems, governance, and ways of working.
Requirements
- At least 7 years of experience in guest experience design, product design, user experience design, service design, or a related discipline.
- Bachelor’s degree focused in industrial design, marketing, business, or a related field, or an additional two years of relevant training or experience in lieu of the degree.
- Demonstrated experience leading highly complex, ambiguous, or cross-portfolio experience work and shaping direction across multiple products, journeys, or business areas.
- Experience defining future-state experience architecture, principles, strategic concepts, and evaluation approaches using research, experimentation, and behavioral or operational data.
- Experience influencing senior Product, Engineering, Analytics, operational, and business leaders to align priorities, roadmaps, tradeoffs, and investments around an end-to-end experience vision.
- Working knowledge of accessibility standards, design systems, and responsive digital experiences.
- Proficiency with modern design, collaboration, and prototyping tools such as Figma, Miro, or comparable platforms.
- Demonstrated systems thinking and experience designing complex experiences where digital interfaces connect with human operations, service processes, or physical environments.
- Ability to combine qualitative guest insights with quantitative product data from analytics, experimentation, or behavioral tools to inform design decisions and measure outcomes.
- Ability to connect experience strategy and design decisions to guest needs, business priorities, operational realities, and measurable enterprise outcomes.
- Exceptional communication, storytelling, facilitation, and executive presentation skills, including the ability to build alignment across diverse senior stakeholders and mentor design practitioners.
- High school diploma or equivalent.
- At least 18 years of age.
- Must be authorized to work in the United States.
Nice To Haves
- Experience designing e-commerce, travel, or other large-scale consumer experiences.
- Experience using behavioral, operational, or product-performance data to improve guest journeys.
- Experience designing experiences that cross digital channels or connect digital and operational touchpoints.
Responsibilities
- Define future-state experience architecture and long-term strategic design direction across end-to-end guest journeys, digital products, and channels.
- Identify systemic guest-experience gaps spanning teams, technologies, or business areas, and lead strategic discovery when the problem, solution, or ownership is not yet defined.
- Translate guest insight, business strategy, market shifts, and emerging capabilities into experience principles, future-state concepts, and recommendations that influence portfolio and roadmap decisions.
- Lead experience direction for high-impact or transformative initiatives spanning multiple product teams or business areas, and create alignment around the intended end-to-end guest experience.
- Establish frameworks and standards that help teams make consistent experience decisions while balancing guest, business, operational, and technology needs.
- Define cross-journey measures and evaluation approaches, using research, experimentation, and behavioral or operational data to assess strategic outcomes and guide investment decisions.
- Make decisions on experience architecture, principles, and strategic design approaches, and influence senior leaders when competing priorities or local decisions create fragmentation.
- Provide functional leadership, critique, and mentorship across the design practice.
- Partner with other principals to resolve cross-portfolio dependencies and maintain a coherent end-to-end guest experience.
- Lead the evolution of design systems, governance, and ways of working.
- Embody company values: own safety, do the right thing, be caring and kind, and deliver performance.
Benefits
- Free stand-by travel privileges on Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and Horizon Air.
- Comprehensive well-being programs, including medical, dental, and vision benefits.
- Generous 401(k) match program.
- Annual bonus plans.
- Generous holiday and paid time off.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
