Lead, Design

Nextdoor; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health plans

OneMedical membership

Equity grant

Job summary

Nextdoor in San Francisco is seeking a Lead Designer for the Consumer Product team. You will shape how neighbors connect with each other, their neighborhoods, and local businesses, by leading craft for Consumer Design and guiding a multidisciplinary team to ship high‑quality experiences.

As a player‑coach, you’ll run critiques, develop growth plans for designers, own the design capacity, and balance speed with craft while actively contributing hands‑on work.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in UX/product design with leadership.
• Hands-on player-coach who mentors designers.
• Ability to run critiques and calibrate levels.
• Experience with design systems and cross-functional collaboration.
• Comfort presenting to executives with evidence.
• Experience using AI-assisted design tools.

Responsibilities

• Run weekly design critiques and establish a robust review process.
• Grow and manage a team of consumer designers (5–6).
• Own the design capacity model across seven product areas.
• Represent design viewpoint in key product discussions about speed and craft.
• Arbitrate design-system exceptions and maintain consistency.
• Ship hands-on design work in a high-impact area.

Skills

UX design

Product design

Design leadership

Figma

Design systems

Research methods

Executive presence

AI design tooling

Job description

Nextdoor Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) is the essential neighborhood network. Neighbors, public agencies, and businesses use Nextdoor to connect around local information that matters in more than 350,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries. Nextdoor builds innovative technology to foster local community, share important news, and create neighborhood connections at scale. Download the app and join the neighborhood at

#Team Nextdoor Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) is the essential neighborhood network. Neighbors, public agencies, and businesses use Nextdoor to connect around local information that matters in more than 350,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries. Nextdoor builds innovative technology to foster local community, share important news, and create neighborhood connections at scale. Download the app and join the neighborhood at nextdoor.com.

Meet Your Future Neighbors

As a Lead Designer on Nextdoor's Consumer Product team, you'll help shape the future of how neighbors connect with one another, their neighborhoods, and local businesses and events. You'll join a collaborative team of designers, product managers, engineers, and researchers working to evolve and improve the experience across our platform.

We're hiring a player-coach to lead craft for Consumer Design, someone who runs a rigorous crit, coaches designers toward their next level, and holds the line when speed and quality trade off, while still shipping hands‑on work themselves.

Deeply human‑centered and mission‑driven, you're excited to create digital experiences that strengthen real‑world connections and empower neighbors to build stronger communities.

At Nextdoor, we operate in an AI‑first environment and expect every team member to actively use AI tools as part of their workflow. We aren't looking for prompt engineers; we’re looking for people who use tools like Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Glean to challenge their own thinking and take full ownership of AI‑assisted outputs.

We also offer a warm and inclusive work environment that embraces a hybrid employment model, blending an in office presence and work from home experience for our valued employees. The hiring team will go over these expectations with you if you are being considered for a role near one of our offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and London.

Your Responsibilities Will Include

• Running weekly design critiques and rebuilding a healthy manager‑level review process so projects of every size get rigorous feedback at the right altitude
• Establishing regular 1:1s and growth plans for a team of consumer designers, and advocating for their growth and promotion during performance review cycles
• Owning the design capacity model across seven product areas, managing a team of 5 to 6 consumer designers. Owning the capacity model and the recommendation on where design headcount goes
• Representing design's point of view in product discussions where speed and craft are in tension, starting with a key decision about how neighbors filter and navigate content in the app
• Arbitrating design‑system exceptions, deciding when to say no to a one‑off component that doesn't belong in our shared design system
• Shipping hands‑on design work yourself on at least one high‑impact area of the consumer product
• Participating in in‑person Nextdoor events such as trainings, off‑sites, volunteer days, and team building exercises
• Building in‑person relationships with team members and contributing to Nextdoor's company culture
• This role reports directly to the EVP of Product and is the senior‑most design voice in the Consumer org

What You’ll Bring To The Team

• 8+ years of experience in UX design, product design, or a related field, with a strong track record of designing and shipping user‑centered products. Including experience directly managing designers through performance and promotion cycles
• A track record as a player‑coach, practicing designer and people manager at once, with the discipline to protect your own IC time
• Calibrated craft judgment: you can run a crit, make a leveling call, and defend it in calibration
• Proficiency in Figma and other design tools for creating wireframes, prototypes, and high‑fidelity designs
• Experience working with and contributing to design systems, ensuring consistency and scalability across surfaces
• Strong understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods, with the ability to synthesize insights into actionable design decisions
• Comfort holding a design position in rooms with executives, backed by evidence rather than taste
• Fluency with AI‑assisted design tooling and a clear sense of where it helps and where it can't substitute for human judgment

Join us to design products that make a real‑world impact, strengthening communities and bringing people closer together.

Rewards

Compensation, benefits, perks, and recognition programs at Nextdoor come together to create our total rewards package. Compensation will vary depending on your relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.

• The starting salary for this role is expected to range from$240,000 to $275,000 on an annualized basis, or potentially greater in the event that your 'level' of proficiency exceeds the level expected for the role. The salary range will be determined by the candidate’s geographic location.
• We expect to award a meaningful equity grant for this role. With quarterly vesting, your first vest date will take place within 3 months of your start date.
• When it comes to benefits, we have you covered! Nextdoor employees can choose between a variety of health plans, including a 100% covered employee only plan option, and we also provide a OneMedical membership for concierge care.

At Nextdoor, we empower our employees to build stronger local communities. To create a platform where all feel welcome, we want our workforce to reflect the diversity of the neighbors we serve. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. In accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we always consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

For information about our collection and use of applicants’ personal information, please see Nextdoor's Personnel Privacy Notice, found here.