Principal Product Designer, Customer Design Lead

About the Design Team

We're a tight-knit team of product designers, researchers, and content designers working closely with engineers and product managers to research, explore, and iterate on well-crafted user experiences that are innovative, engaging, and delightful. We collaborate regularly through design critiques, work sessions, and presentations to inspire and influence the direction of the product and company as a whole.

About the Role

As the Customer Design Lead, you will own and elevate the end-to-end experience for Thumbtack's Customer platform across native and web. This is a horizontal, cross-pillar role: you will work across pods and pillars to ensure the product is cohesive, consistent, and positioned for the future — not just well-executed in any one area. You will help shape the future direction of the customer experience by identifying strategic opportunities, influencing product direction, and driving ambitious, customer-centered thinking across the organization.

You will set the quality bar for the customer experience, identify systemic gaps, establish design principles, mentor senior and mid-level designers, and drive the highest-impact strategic projects. You will operate as a strategic leader for the customer experience and business.

What you’ll do

• Own the end-to-end quality and coherence of the customer experience across native and web
• Shape product direction at the pillar and company level through customer insight, systems thinking, and strategic design leadership
• Identify systemic experience gaps and high-impact opportunities; drive cross-pillar projects to close them
• Establish and uphold customer design principles that guide teams in making product and quality tradeoff decisions
• Identify systemic experience gaps and drive cross-pillar projects to close them
• Produce platform-level artifacts: experience maps, north star visions, and strategic roadmaps
• Mentor senior and mid-level designers on craft and career growth

In order to be successful, you must bring

• 12+ years of product design experience, with significant time at principal or staff level
• Portfolio demonstrating platform-level or pillar-level design ownership, not just individual feature execution
• Deep expertise in cross-platform experience design (native + web)
• Track record of establishing quality infrastructure: design principles, quality bar or other rituals
• Strong product thinking and the ability to shape strategy, prioritize opportunities, and navigate complex business and user tradeoffs
• Exceptional mentorship and coaching skills, particularly for senior and staff ICs
• Highly effective communication skills: able to present and influence at the org and company level
• Experience partnering with research and analytics leaders to drive forward-thinking, strategic insights
• Demonstrated ability to work across multiple teams and drive alignment on ambiguous, high-stakes problems

Expected salary ranges

• For candidates living in San Francisco / Bay Area, San Jose, New York City, or Seattle metros, the expected salary range for the role is currently $293,300 - $379,500
• For candidates living in Austin, TX or Washington DC metros or in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Washington states, the expected salary range for the role is currently $264,400 - $342,100
• For candidates living in all other US locations, the expected salary range for this role is currently $249,100 - $322,300