Senior Product Designer, Games

The New York Times•New York, NY

5d•$120,000 - $145,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The New York Times Games team creates and evolves experiences across Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, the Daily Crossword, and other products. The Senior Product Designer will develop new Games experiences and evolve core experiences across web and apps. This is an individual-contributor role focused on deep craft expertise and product thinking to deliver clear, sophisticated, playful experiences. The position reports to the Design Director of Product Design for Games. This is a hybrid role based at The New York Times’ New York City headquarters, with an expectation of working onsite at least three days per week. The role supports the company’s commitment to journalistic independence and its mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.

Requirements

At least 4 years of design experience working within cross-functional teams.
A portfolio demonstrating thought process and finished design work.
Demonstrated experience building, maintaining, and applying design systems in environments with legacy UI or multiple parallel component libraries.
Fluency in UX best practices for responsive web and mobile.
Knowledge of usability and accessible, inclusive design, including typography scales, contrast, motion, and semantics.
Proficiency in Figma and Rive or equivalent software.

Nice To Haves

Experience contributing to a design system across web and native apps.
Experience partnering with platform or infrastructure teams on foundational refactors or component-library migrations.
Experience shaping design practices such as critiques, documentation, or templates; facilitating stakeholder discovery; and aligning design intent with implementation through design tokens, component APIs, and specifications.

Responsibilities

Partner with Product, Engineering, and cross-functional teammates on product strategy and discovery; frame complex problems, clarify audience needs, and shape opportunities across Games products and features.
Lead design exploration before detailed execution by identifying the work to be done, producing divergent solutions, developing concrete approaches, and collaborating to narrow directions and establish requirements.
Prototype and validate ideas through user testing; present design rationale and build alignment around decisions.
Turn concepts into detailed, production-ready flows, mocks, screens, and specifications; work with engineers and product teams on implementation tradeoffs and shipped experiences.
Contribute to Figma libraries, shared design systems, and engineering documentation aligned with implemented component libraries; help ensure web and app experiences meet brand and accessibility standards.
Facilitate discovery sessions and contribute to design rituals; mentor teammates and improve team processes and documentation.
Support The Times’s value of journalistic independence and its mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.