Principal UX Designer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

6h

About The Position

The X3 Strategy Exploration team within E+D is looking for a Principal UX Designer to help us inform and guide future AI initiatives within M365 and Copilot. Our group is a multi-disciplinary team composed of UX Strategists, Researchers, Designers, UX Engineers, and Storytellers. We take a horizontal, humanity-centered approach to developing UX perspectives on emerging challenges at the intersection of Business, Experience, and Technology. Our work crosses product silos in the form of thought leadership, creation of new experiences, and what is sometimes referred to as incubation or envisioning. We embrace a flexible, multi-disciplinary approach to drive innovation within M365, hypothesizing, experimenting, prototyping, and refining to build perspective around near future development opportunities for Microsoft enterprise products.

Within this context, the UX design team partners with executive leadership, product teams, other incubation and exploration groups, and individuals working in research and UX engineering. As new AI model capabilities emerge, we ground UX in those capabilities to create new workflows 1-2 years before they are expected to ship. We also inform leadership decision making that drives product and feature development. We work with the familiar UX design tools to do it…Figma, wireframes, prototypes, and constant sharing and building on the ideas of others in the team…but we rapidly adopt new AI-specific tools as they emerge. We are humans designing AI experiences with AI design tools (including some that our collaborators have developed in-house). We seek to create new experiences based not only on user needs but also grounded in emerging AI model behavior. Our work is inherently systems-oriented: connecting user needs, product constraints, and organizational realities into coherent end-to-end experiences. Research, hypothesize, design, prototype, learn, refine, repeat.
We are looking for a Principal UX Designer with a fascination for discovering and addressing unmet customer needs in future AI-based workflows and leading and sharing design explorations in those areas. This role will work closely with the Design Director, other designers, and peers in product teams as well as collaborators in strategy, research, and UX engineering on projects with significant executive visibility. We’re looking for a systems thinker who can zoom out to frame complex, cross-product problem spaces, then zoom in to craft clear, usable, and compelling experiences. You’ll also be a storyteller; able to translate ambiguity into crisp narratives, artifacts, and prototypes that influence decisions and align stakeholders. As a project leader, you’ll drive clarity and momentum across partners, shape the work plan, and help the team deliver on time without sacrificing craft. As a Principal, you’ll actively build cross-org relationships, influence direction across product groups, and help translate our work into decisions and action at multiple levels of the organization. You’ll also partner with internal team leadership to cultivate a creative, inclusive, and inspiring design culture—raising the bar on craft, feedback, and collaboration. Our design team is a mix of experience levels and as such, part of this role includes mentorship and guidance for our younger designers.

Requirements

• Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 6+ years experience working in product or service design
• OR Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 8+ years experience working in product or service design
• OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product or service design or using design thinking to solve problems).

Nice To Haves

• Curiosity and interest in LLMs, generative AI, and the future of work; comfort with ambiguity and emerging design patterns
• Demonstrated systems thinking: ability to map and design end-to-end workflows across products, roles, and touchpoints
• Storytelling excellence: verbal and visual communication, and the ability to create narratives that align stakeholders and influence executive decisions
• Project leadership: experience leading multi-disciplinary workstreams, driving crisp problem definition, and keeping teams unblocked and accountable
• Cross-org collaboration and influence: build relationships across functions and product teams, align stakeholders, and drive decisions through clear rationale and narratives
• Design culture leadership: help internal team leadership build an inspiring design culture through domain expertise, mentorship, critiques, craft bar-raising, and inclusive team rituals
• Comfort designing with AI (using AI to accelerate research synthesis, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation) and designing for AI (agentic experiences, human-in-the-loop, transparency, and trust)
• Experience with common UI design tools (e.g., Figma) and prototyping (in pixels and/or code)
• Broad UX/UI design knowledge, with depth in one or more of the following areas: visual design, interaction/motion design, AI-specific UX/UI design, mobile, or strategic/incubation design

Responsibilities

• Discovering and addressing unmet customer needs in future AI-based workflows and leading and sharing design explorations in those areas.
• Work closely with the Design Director, other designers, and peers in product teams as well as collaborators in strategy, research, and UX engineering on projects with significant executive visibility.
• Translate ambiguity into crisp narratives, artifacts, and prototypes that influence decisions and align stakeholders.
• Drive clarity and momentum across partners, shape the work plan, and help the team deliver on time without sacrificing craft.
• Actively build cross-org relationships, influence direction across product groups, and help translate our work into decisions and action at multiple levels of the organization.
• Partner with internal team leadership to cultivate a creative, inclusive, and inspiring design culture—raising the bar on craft, feedback, and collaboration.
• Mentorship and guidance for our younger designers.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal