Slack VP, Product Design (Individual Contributor; Principal Architect)

Leadout Capital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 350,000 - 500,000; Full time

Job summary

Slack is seeking a VP, Product Design (Individual Contributor; Principal Architect) to shape the AI Operating System for action. You will drive the craft, define the product vision, and personally execute at the highest level on Slack’s next generation.

This is not a management role but a rare opportunity to influence strategy and outcomes at scale. Reporting to the SVP & Chief Design Officer, you will collaborate with product and engineering leadership to prototype, pressure-test, and shape

Qualifications

• 12+ years of product design experience at scale.
• Portfolio showing visionary concept work and exceptional execution.
• Ability to define product direction through design, not just respond to it.
• Experience designing consumer-grade experiences that are intuitive and delightful.

Responsibilities

• Define and prototype the long-range design vision for Slack's agentic future.
• Hands-on, pixel-perfect design at the highest level using AI and prototyping techniques.
• Influence product strategy with design leadership to shape roadmap.
• Drive cross-functional alignment across product, eng, research, and brand.

Skills

Visionary design

Executive communication

Strategic design

Cross-functional leadership

Prototyping

AI design

Agentic UX

Job description

About Slack & The Role

Slack is at an inflection point. We're evolving from the world's most beloved team communication tool into something fundamentally new: an AI operating system where humans and agents work together to get things done. This isn't incremental improvement. It's a reimagining of how work happens.

As Slack VP, Product Design (Individual Contributor; Principal Architect) you will be one of the most important design voices shaping that future. This is not a management role. It's a rare seat at the table for a designer who wants to define the product; to hold the vision, drive the craft, and personally execute at the highest level on the next generation of Slack.

You will report to the SVP & Chief Design Officer and partner deeply with product and engineering leadership to prototype, pressure-test, and shape the platform Slack must become. You'll make work that millions of people use every day and you'll help us make the hardest design problems look inevitable in hindsight.

The Opportunity: Designing Slack as the AI Operating System for Action

Slack's defining role in this next era is as the context layer for work: the intelligent interface where humans and AI agents collaborate fluidly to drive outcomes. Built on context, Slack becomes the single, personalized command center that replaces fragmented apps, inboxes, and point solutions.

As Slack VP, Product Design (Individual Contributor; Principal Architect) you will be the designer helping us answer the hardest questions at the frontier of this transformation:

• Human-Agent Collaboration: What are the right interaction models for a world where AI agents are co-workers? How do agents present information, take action, and hand back control in ways that feel natural, not jarring?
• Radical Simplification: How do we strip Slack down to its most essential, powerful form while making it capable of far more? How do we absorb complexity so users never have to feel it?
• Dynamic & Ambient Interfaces: How do we design surfaces that appear when and where decisions need to be made (across voice, mobile, wearables, and desktop) rather than requiring users to navigate to them?
• The AI Operating System: What does it look like when Slack becomes the single pane of glass for every kind of worker: the CEO, the service agent, the developer, the sales rep? How do we make that feel personal and not overwhelming?

Key Responsibilities

• Vision & Concept Design: Define and prototype the long-range design vision for Slack's agentic future, producing the seminal concepts and vignettes that align the organization and inspire the roadmap
• Executional Craft: Personal, hands-on design at the highest level, pixel-perfect, conceptually sharp, deeply considered. Uses whatever tools work best (AI, code, and emerging prototyping techniques) to turn ideas into working experiences fast, explore possibilities, and raise the bar. The bar you set becomes the bar for the team.
• Strategic Design Influence: Partner with the CDO, CPO, and Engineering leadership to shape product strategy through design. Influence decisions at the SVP and C-level through the power of your work and your thinking
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Drive alignment across product, engineering, research, and brand through the quality and clarity of your design work, without needing formal authority
• Simplification as a Design Discipline: Lead the work to radically simplify Slack's current experience, defining what we kill, what we keep, and what we transform as we move toward an AI-first paradigm
• Emerging Interaction Patterns: Invent new design patterns for agentic UX, for voice-anchored experiences, ambient AI surfaces, multiplayer human-agent co-creation, and dynamic UI generation
• User Advocacy at Scale: Be a relentless champion for the user, particularly the enterprise user under pressure; the worker with 500 unread messages, zero configuration tolerance, and no time to learn a new paradigm

Minimum Qualifications

• 12+ years of product design experience, with senior IC work at significant scale
• A portfolio that demonstrates both visionary concept work and exceptional executional craft
• Proven ability to define product direction through design, not just respond to it
• Experience designing consumer-grade experiences, deeply intuitive, delightful, effortless, in complex product contexts
• A track record of influencing product strategy at the leadership level without relying on hierarchy
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills; can make complex ideas simple and make simple ideas compelling

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing for AI, machine learning, or human-agent collaboration. Ideally at the interaction pattern level, not just the UI level
• Experience with enterprise software and the unique constraints of B2B SaaS at scale
• Familiarity with emerging modalities: voice UX, ambient/wearable surfaces, AI-generated UI
• Experience working directly with C-suite leadership to define and evolve product vision
• Understanding of Slack, its ecosystem, and what makes it uniquely powerful; and what needs to change

What Makes This Role Different

Most senior IC design roles ask you to execute within a defined vision. This one asks you to be the vision while still doing the work. You'll have the strategic altitude of a leadership role and the craft latitude of a builder role. You'll ship things that change how millions of people experience their working lives.

If you've ever looked at a product you love and thought "I could take this somewhere no one's been yet"... this is that role.