Lead Designer

Confidential; United States; Remote; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Confidential is seeking a Lead Product Designer to own the design direction and overall user experience of every consumer-facing product we offer, and to hold everyone who builds them to a clear design standard.

You will be an individual contributor with real authority, defining the standard, building it into our design systems, and working with product and engineering early, and supporting the product development through launch.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in product design with ownership of design direction or design systems for consumer products.
• Portfolio showing ownership of a design system and measurable quality improvement.
• Experience with multi-brand or multi-product design systems and component libraries.
• Hands-on fluency with AI-assisted design and prototyping tools; strong design standards.
• Comfort reading front-end code and collaborating with engineers on components.
• Ability to influence without formal authority and maintain high standards with tact.

Responsibilities

• Own the design direction and overall UX across the Consumer portfolio and define quality.
• Set UX principles and standards; keep them current with product changes.
• Be the authoritative voice on design quality; review work pre- and post-release with teams.
• Audit experiences regularly and maintain a backlog of UX and design deficits.
• Own Consumer and Enterprise design systems, including components, patterns, guidelines, accessibility.
• Structure systems for AI-assisted design and development; enable consistent output.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineers early; provide clear, actionable feedback.
• Coach PMs and engineers on design principles to uphold quality when not present.
• Prototype to align on direction using AI tools, code, or Figma.

Skills

Design leadership

Design systems

AI-assisted design

Figma prototyping

User research

Accessibility (WCAG)

Cross-brand design

Distributed teams

Tools

Claude Design

Claude Code

Figma

Job description

This is not a traditional product design role. Our product managers and engineers design and build with AI tools such as Claude Code and Claude Design, so producing screens is no longer the bottleneck. Keeping quality and consistency high is. We are looking for a Lead Product Designer to own the design direction and overall user experience of every consumer-facing product we offer, and to hold everyone who builds them to a clear design standard.

You will be an individual contributor with real authority. You will define the standard, build it into our design systems, and work with product and engineering early, and support the product development through launch. You will be responsible for maintaining design standards and own the overall User Experience across all platforms.

THIS IS A REMOTE POSITION.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

Consumer (primary focus)

• Design System across all brands

Enterprise

• You will own the design system for the Enterprise business, alongside Consumer.
• Ensure adherence to design standards and accessibility requirements.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Design direction and quality

• Own the design direction and overall UX across the Consumer portfolio, and define what "good" looks like across every brand and white label
• Set UX principles and standards that guide product decisions, and keep them current as the products change
• Be the authoritative voice on design quality: review work before and after release, call out gaps, and make sure they get resolved, collaborating with the product and engineering team
• Audit our experiences regularly and keep a prioritized backlog of UX and design deb

Design systems

• Own the Consumer and Enterprise design systems, including components, patterns, content guidelines and accessibility standards
• Structure the systems so they work as inputs to AI-assisted design and development, so teams using tools like Claude Design produce work that meets the standard by default
• Manage multi-brand theming so the core brands, white labels and acquired products share one foundation while keeping their own brand identities
• Bring acquired products onto shared patterns over time

Partnering with product and engineering

• Join discovery early with product managers and product engineers to understand user and business problems before solutions are locked in
• Build design reviews and quality checkpoints into how the product development team works, and give clear, actionable feedback
• Coach product managers and product engineers on design principles so quality holds up when you are not in the room
• Prototype when it is the fastest way to align on direction, using AI tools, code or Figma, whichever works best

Users and the business

• Work with business stakeholders to understand commercial goals such as conversion, retention and subscription growth, and design experiences that serve both users and the business
• Use user research, usability testing, session replays and product analytics to find UX problems and validate decisions
• Hold the line on accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) and quality across 20+ language

THE MUST-HAVES

• 8+ years in product design, including meaningful time owning design direction or design systems for consumer digital products at scale
• A portfolio that shows ownership of a design system and measurable improvement in product quality and consistency, not just screens you produced
• Deep experience with multi-brand or multi-product design systems and component libraries
• Hands-on fluency with AI-assisted design and prototyping tools, and a clear point of view on how design standards should work when anyone can generate UI
• Comfort reading front-end code and working directly with engineers on component implementation
• A proven ability to influence without formal authority, and to hold a high bar with both tact and conviction
• Strong grounding in user-centered design, research methods and accessibility
• Experience with subscription or conversion-driven consumer products, and comfort using data to make design decisions
• Excellent written and spoken English, and the ability to work effectively in a distributed, async team across time zones
• A self-directed, proactive workstyle: you find problems before anyone asks you to

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience in career tech, HR tech, job search or marketplaces
• Experience bringing acquired products onto a shared design system
• Experience designing white-label or B2B2C products
• Front-end skills (HTML/CSS, React) or experience contributing to component code