Senior Director, Design

Rent the Runway • Brooklyn, NY

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Director, Design owns the design infrastructure that supports Rent the Runway’s platform, including the systems, experiences, and visual language that shape how customers discover and use its offerings. This role leads the in-house design function and is accountable for the quality, coherence, and performance of design across the customer-facing platform. Design is part of the Product & Channel Revenue organization and works alongside Product, Engineering, Copy, and Creative. The role translates Brand Creative’s visual identity into scalable experiences across the site, app, and other customer touchpoints.

The Senior Director leads end-to-end UX and product design, develops the design team, and establishes quality standards and review processes. The role also brings a product design perspective to AI-enabled initiatives, partners with cross-functional teams on roadmaps and product decisions, manages design vendors and tools, and represents design’s strategic contribution to leadership.

Requirements

• 10+ years of design experience.
• Demonstrated leadership of multidisciplinary design teams.
• Experience building or significantly evolving a design system in a consumer-facing product environment, with an understanding of how design systems scale across teams and surfaces.
• Strong product design instincts and meaningful experience with complex user journeys, checkout flows, personalization experiences, and discovery surfaces.
• Understanding of how AI is changing product design and a point of view on integrating AI-powered features into a coherent, trustworthy user experience.
• Ability to work effectively with product managers, engineers, and brand leaders and communicate design decisions in terms of business impact.
• Experience building and scaling design organizations, including developing direct reports, establishing team structures, and creating career frameworks and operating rhythms.
• Ability to bring clarity and structure to ambiguous situations, define design problems, align stakeholders, and lead execution.
• Ability to work in a high-stakes, fast-moving environment while protecting quality and moving at speed.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in fashion, retail, or a direct-to-consumer platform.
• Understanding of how customers shop, trust, and return to a brand.

Responsibilities

• Own design systems and visual language implementation, ensuring consistent and accurate expression of the brand across the site, app, email, and internal tools in coordination with Brand Creative.
• Lead the end-to-end UX and product design function across the customer-facing platform, integrating AI tools into team workflows to improve efficiency and output while maintaining quality.
• Drive the product design track for AI-enabled initiatives, including AI-powered discovery, fit recommendations, and product detail page design.
• Build and develop a high-performing, multidisciplinary product design team.
• Establish and maintain design quality standards and review processes, defining and upholding design quality across the team and with external partners.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Channel Revenue in roadmap planning, sprint reviews, and product decisions.
• Collaborate with Brand Creative to translate brand-level design direction into accurate, scalable implementation across digital surfaces.
• Manage design vendors, tools, and operational infrastructure.
• Represent design’s strategic perspective to leadership, explain the business impact of design decisions, and advocate for the resources and space the team needs.

Benefits

• Paid time off, including vacation, paid bereavement, and family sick leave.
• Comprehensive health, vision, dental, flexible spending account, and dependent care benefits from day one.
• 401(k) match.
• Employee subscription and rental discounts.
• Universal paid parental leave for both parents and a flexible return-to-work program.
• Paid sabbatical after five years of continuous service.
• Company-wide events and outings.
• Office-centric work, with corporate employees and technical leaders able to work remotely on Fridays in accordance with company policies.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed