Principal Product Designer, Vrbo

Expedia Group•Austin, TX

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Principal Product Designer for Vrbo, you are a design, practice, and thought leader, highly visible at the organization level. You translate Expedia Group’s brand strategy into coherent, high-quality product experiences across surfaces and platforms, delivering value via design methods through programs that span the organization. You set the bar for design craft and systems thinking, shape vision and strategy, and foster a culture where bold ideas and rigorous execution coexist.

Requirements

10+ years of related professional experience in product, UX, or brand experience design with demonstrable thought and domain leadership.
Bachelor’s degree or higher in a related field (Design, Human‑Computer Interaction, User Experience or similar), or equivalent relevant experience.
Extensive experience as a product/UX designer with a strong focus on brand design within digital products, including ownership of complex, multi‑stakeholder initiatives.
Proven track record designing and shipping end‑to‑end experiences in cross‑functional product teams, collaborating closely with engineering and product management from definition through launch.
Demonstrated expertise in interaction design, visual design, and systems thinking, including the creation and maintenance of scalable design systems, pattern libraries, and brand guidelines.
Functional skills breadth and depth: Expert in 2 core skills, strong in 2, and capable in 1–2 others across interaction, visual, systems, and/or strategy disciplines.
Proficiency with modern design and prototyping tools and workflows, with the ability to work effectively within existing systems while evolving them based on product and brand needs.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing shopping, discovery, search, marketplace, or travel-related experiences, ideally at scale within a complex product ecosystem.
Demonstrated ability to balance brand expression, usability, and strategic business goals, using systems thinking to connect experiences across journeys, touchpoints, and platforms.
Experience leading lean, highly collaborative programs where scope is broad, and designers are expected to operate with flexibility, initiative, and strong facilitation skills.
Proven strength partnering with user research and leveraging qualitative insights, behavioral data, and product context to inform and iterate on design direction.
Advanced AI x Design literacy, including exploring how AI-enabled experiences, decision support, or workflow optimization can shape future traveler journeys and internal design practices, and safely integrating AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve outcomes.

Responsibilities

Lead and shape end-to-end Vrbo traveler experiences with a focus on core shopping, discovery, and booking journeys that raise the overall quality bar for the brand.
Drive ambiguous, high-priority, zero-to-one design programs, defining future-state experiences and establishing clear direction from early concepts through delivery.
Apply strong interaction, visual, and systems design craft to create cohesive, high-fidelity flows, including information architecture, data presentation, and component-level patterns across the product ecosystem.
Use prototyping as a primary tool to explore ideas, validate concepts, and communicate clear narratives that align design, product, engineering, content, and research partners.
Partner closely with cross-functional leaders to connect brand, product, and customer needs, using storytelling, structured frameworks, and evidence from research to influence strategy and execution.
Explore and shape how evolving capabilities, including AI-enabled experiences and workflows, inform future traveler journeys, demonstrating familiarity with AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products.