Senior Director, Product Design

Strava • San Francisco, CA

9d • Hybrid

About The Position

Strava is the app for active people. With over 150 million athletes in more than 185 countries, Strava is where connection, motivation, and personal bests thrive. No matter your activity, gear, or goals, we help you find your crew, crush your milestones, and keep moving forward. Start your journey with Strava today. Our mission is simple: to motivate people to live their best active lives. We believe in the power of movement to connect and drive people forward. We're looking for a Senior Director, Product Design to lead our design strategy and vision across the organization. You'll be responsible for leading a 20+ product design team, championing user-centered design practices, and ensuring design excellence is integrated into every stage of product development. You'll oversee end-to-end product design initiatives, working across multiple product areas and user experiences. You'll partner closely with product managers, engineers, and researchers to define design strategy, drive feature development, and establish design standards that elevate product quality across the company. You'll translate business goals and user needs into compelling product experiences, collaborating on roadmap prioritization, and mentoring designers to foster a culture of innovation and design thinking throughout the organization. We are looking for a leader who has experience (or knowledge of) building within subscription based business models, ability to partner closely with Research on user needs and jobs, ability to partner with our business strategy partners and experience in some of these verticals: social, mapping, cartography, data visualization, Apple Watch or other device design, and third party integrations. We follow a flexible hybrid model that translates to more than half of your time on-site in our San Francisco office — three days per week.

Requirements

• 10+ years of product design experience with proven ability to develop strategies aligned with business goals and influence strategic decisions.
• Proven ability to lead high performing design teams, with demonstrated success recruiting, managing, and retaining strong talent.
• Exceptional ability to build relationships and drive alignment across product design, product management, engineering and other cross-functional partners.
• Proven track record balancing design quality with shipping velocity in fast-paced environments while establishing efficient systems and standards.

Nice To Haves

• experience (or knowledge of) building within subscription based business models
• ability to partner closely with Research on user needs and jobs
• ability to partner with our business strategy partners
• experience in some of these verticals: social, mapping, cartography, data visualization, Apple Watch or other device design, and third party integrations

Responsibilities

• Translate Strava's user needs and business goals into a design strategy that guides product decisions, roadmap prioritization, and feature development.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing design team through hiring, performance management, and career development.
• Influence product and engineering leaders through clear communication, data-driven advocacy, and relationship building—earning trust to shape product direction.
• Make informed design decisions that balance quality with velocity, establishing processes and systems that enable execution at scale.
• Partner across research, product, engineering, and brand/marketing to align on design requirements and ensure excellence throughout development.
• Approve product designs from information architecture to design system components to visual design, motion, rive, visual design, map and cartography, apple watch designs, data visualization, partner and third party integration and design implementation

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees