Principal Product Designer- United States

Very LLC•New York, NY

2d•$160,000 - $170,000•Remote

About The Position

This is our most senior individual contributor design role. Not a management track, a craft and leverage one. A principal still does the work: running the full arc of design on a project, from the fog of an undefined problem through launch. But the reason we want you at this level is what you do beyond any single project. You move across our work to make sure it's set up for every designer to succeed within it. You shape how we sell and scope new engagements. You set the craft standards and build the tools and processes the whole team works from. You go deep and you own the outcome, wherever you're plugged in. We're embracing AI and figuring out where it actually belongs. Using it everywhere isn't the goal, and using it doesn't mean we stop doing craft. We think AI is good at expanding on patterns, not creating them, and at giving us specific tools to design more fluidly across design and code. We pick our spots, and we never take human judgment out of the process. A principal doesn't just adopt that approach, you help define it.

Requirements

A minimum of 5 years in a design lead role, setting direction on projects. (For context, that usually means around a decade in design overall.)
A track record of launching real products, not just polished concepts. Zero-to-one and incremental work both.
A history of mentoring designers and raising the craft of a team, not just shipping your own work.
A point of view on where AI belongs in a design practice, and the drive to build the tools that put it there.
Communication above all. Writing matters, but what matters more is your ability to speak, articulate your thinking, and carry a room.
Self-direction and ownership. You scope your work, manage its blast radius, and know when to push back or say no.
Comfort with ambiguity, at both the design and business layer.
Design systems thinking as a core competency.
UX and UI design
Interactive prototyping
User research
Data visualization
Design systems
Must be authorized to work in the United States of America without sponsorship.
A portfolio is required, alongside your resume.
Breadth: a quick read on your range and craft across a body of work.
Depth: be ready to take us deep into two projects, walking us through the audit, the goals, the collaboration, the outcomes, and what you'd do differently.
Be ready to go deep live, in the moment and without prep. You should know your work front to back.
Client Obsessed: Keeps the client’s success front and center. Measures technical choices by their business impact.
Clear Communicator: Collaborates effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Quality-Driven: Holds themselves to high standards for code quality and reliability.
Ownership Mindset: Takes responsibility for delivering solutions that work in real-world conditions.
Problem Solver: Thrive in complexity and find solutions even when requirements are evolving.

Nice To Haves

IoT and connected-product experience
React, HTML, and CSS (our team does this; we can teach it)
Experience designing for data-heavy or analytical products, where the challenge is making complex information feel clear and actionable
Experience designing agentic or AI-driven products, you understand how to design for systems that act, not just respond.

Responsibilities

Shape the work before it starts. Partner with sales through pre-sales and scoping. Act as a first point of contact for clients and delivery teams.
Do the work. UX, UI, interactive prototyping, research, data visualization, and design systems. Run discovery workshops and alignment sessions. Facilitate feedback with clients and their users. Partner closely with engineering. Make sure design QA happens.
Set the bar for everyone else. Define the processes and craft standards the team works from, and make sure they're held across projects. Build the tooling that makes the team faster and better in an AI-enabled world. Mentor designers and lift the craft of the people around you.