Principal Product Designer - Diner Platform . OpenTable

Design Better Podcast; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

5 weeks paid vacation

Private health & dental insurance

Headspace subscription

Therapy sessions

Job summary

OpenTable is hiring a Principal Product Designer for the Diner Platform, shaping how diners discover, book, and return to restaurants across mobile apps and website. You will lead complex problems in acquisition, engagement, and retention, guiding projects from exploration through build while managing a small design team reporting to a Design Director.

You will collaborate with product, engineering, and data partners to balance diner needs with feasibility and business goals, influencing

Qualifications

• 7+ years of product design experience leading complex consumer products.
• Portfolio shows design strategy, interaction, and visual craft across mobile and web.
• Experience with AI-native workflows and collaborating with product, eng, and research teams.

Responsibilities

• Set the vision for the diner experience and align teams.
• Tackle messy problems, bring the right people together, iterate quickly.
• Manage a team of designers with regular feedback and growth opportunities.
• Teach new ways of working, including AI-native workflows and design decisions.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and data partners from discovery to booking.
• Explain the work and reasoning to senior leaders.

Skills

Product design leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

AI-native workflows

Design vision with partners

Communication skills

People management

Job description

This hybrid role requires working in the office two days per week.

With millions of diners, 70,000+ restaurant partners and 25+ years of experience, OpenTable, part of Booking Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), is an industry leader with a passion for helping restaurants thrive. Our world-class technology empowers restaurants to focus on what matters most – their team, their guests, and their bottom line – while enabling diners to discover and book the perfect restaurant for every occasion.

Every employee at OpenTable has a tangible impact on what we do and how we do it. You’ll also be part of a global team and its portfolio of metasearch brands. Hospitality is all about taking care of others, and it defines our culture.

About the Job

As a Principal Product Designer on the Diner Platform team, you will shape how millions of diners discover, book, and return to the restaurants they love, across our mobile apps and website. You will take on the most complex problems in acquisition, engagement, and retention, whether that means setting the vision for something new or stepping into a stalled project to find the way forward. You will work hands-on from early exploration through the build, and you will manage a small team of one to three designers while reporting to a Design Director. Your work will raise the quality and speed of design across the platform and help the designers around you grow.

Responsibilities

• Set the vision for where the diner experience goes next, and bring teams along with it
• Step into messy problems, bring the right people together, and get something real to react to within days, then stay in the work through the build, shipping alongside engineers
• Manage a team of one to three designers, with regular feedback, coaching, and career growth
• Teach new ways of working, including AI-native workflows, and sharpen how we make design decisions
• Work with product, engineering, and data partners to balance diner needs, technical feasibility, and business goals, from discovery through booking
• Explain the work, and the thinking behind it, to senior leaders

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of product design experience, including leading design for complex consumer products
• A portfolio that shows design strategy, interaction design, and exceptional visual craft across iOS, Android, and responsive web
• Experience working with AI-native workflows
• Experience setting and driving design vision with partners in product, engineering, and research
• Strong written and verbal communication, including explaining and defending design decisions to senior audiences
• Experience managing designers

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience scaling AI-native ways of working across a design team, not just in your own practice
• Fluency with front-end code, or experience prototyping in code
• A track record of using both insights and experimentation, like A/B testing, to guide design decisions
• Experience designing for marketplaces, discovery, or reservation and booking products
• A passion for food and dining

Benefits and Perks

• 5 weeks paid vacation
• Private health & dental insurance
• Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year
• Focus on mental health and well-being:
• Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth
• Company-paid subscription to Headspace
• Annual company-wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!)
• Paid parental leave
• Time off for your birthday
• Paid volunteer time
• Focus on your career growth:
• Development Dollars
• Leadership development
• Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings
• Travel Discounts
• Employee Resource Groups
• Income protection and life assurance
• Employee Assistance Program - including 24/7 GP & free legal advice
• Pension plan contributions
• Discounted gym membership
• Bike2Work
• Season ticket loan
• Social events & Thursday happy hours
• Free lunch 2 days per week

The best connections happen face-to-face, whether you’re sitting down to dinner or having coffee with a coworker. That’s why OpenTable has adopted a hybrid workplace model. This role aligns with that approach, with an expectation of coming into the office two days a week—giving employees the best of both worlds: in-person collaboration and flexibility.

Work Environment & Flexibility

At OpenTable, we pride ourselves on fostering a global and dynamic work environment. As a team member with us, you will benefit from a schedule tailored to accommodate a global workforce operating across multiple time zones. While the majority of your responsibilities may align with conventional business hours, there will be instances where you are expected to manage communications - via calls, Slack messages, or emails - outside of regular working hours to effectively collaborate with international colleagues, respond to restaurant partners, and/or address urgent matters. OpenTable will always abide by and consider local laws and regulations.

Inclusion

We’re committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels they belong and can thrive. We know the best ideas come when we bring different voices to the table, so we're building a team as dynamic as the diners and restaurants we serve—and fostering a culture where everyone feels welcome to be themselves.

If you need accommodations during the application or interview process, or on the job, we’re here to support you. Please reach out to your recruiter to request any accommodations.