Principal Product Designer - Lead & Coach Design Team

Linktree; New York (NY); On-site; USD 280,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellbeing allowance

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Retirement contributions

Stock options

Generous vacation & parental leave

Job summary

Linktree is seeking a Principal Product Designer to lead and grow a small team of senior designers, while remaining hands-on with design and owning the most challenging problems. You’ll set vision, craft standards, and partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to drive business impact.

As a member of the design leadership team, you’ll hire, mentor, and scale the team, balance individual craft with management, and help define how Linktree scales design as the company grows.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of design experience, with prior management of individual contributors.
• A genuine player-coach — still hands-on and excellent at the craft, and energized by both doing the work and developing others.
• Proven track record of shipping high-quality design within a consumer product or creator/ marketplace platform.
• Demonstrable proof of using AI as part of how you explore, prototype, communicate, and create.
• Demonstrated ability to hire, coach, develop, and retain strong individual-contributor designers, especially at the senior level.

Responsibilities

• Lead, manage, and develop a small team (3–5+) of senior IC designers through the work, creating a culture of craft, ownership, candid feedback, and high performance.
• Personally own and ship design work on the highest-leverage or most ambiguous problems.
• Set design vision and craft direction for your area, ensuring quality and consistency across your team's work.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing leaders to align design with business priorities.
• Own hiring and team composition for your area, adapting as the business and the team scale.
• Establish and evolve craft standards, critique practices, and design operating rhythms for the team.
• Represent design in cross-functional forums, translating design work into business impact.
• Balance individual craft contribution with management, modelling the standard you expect of the team.

Skills

Leadership

Hands-on design

Mentoring

AI in design

Hiring & people

Cross-functional

Job description

Linktree is seeking a Principal Product Designer to lead and grow a small team of senior designers, while remaining hands-on with design and owning the most challenging problems. You’ll set vision, craft standards, and partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to drive business impact.

As a member of the design leadership team, you’ll hire, mentor, and scale the team, balance individual craft with management, and help define how Linktree scales design as the company grows.