Principal Product Designer

What the Role Is Babylist is growing to support more families in more ways and personalization is at the core of our strategy and product innovation. We’re hiring a principal designer to own it. This role is the durable design and experience owner for personalization, accountable for the UX, vision, KPIs, and quality bar that define how it feels across our product. You translate company goals into clear priorities so the team always knows what to work on and why. You take bold bets, pushing past safe incrementalism to make the case for step-function improvements — advocating for customers’ long-term needs while ensuring business impact. You epitomize being a builder: getting into the work, codebase, and data directly rather than delegating, standing up prototypes and contributing to production-quality interfaces when that’s fastest. You partner with engineers, PMs, and analysts as peer-builders, setting the standard for what an AI-native designer creates. You shape the craft standards and operating model that define Design at Babylist, leading Design’s transition to AI-native product development at scale. This role reports to the VP, Head of Product Design and Research; partners closely with the Consumer Tech Leadership team; works alongside other product designers as an individual contributor and mentor. Who You Are • Strategic visionary. You combine user needs, business priorities, and sharp product and design sense into an inspirational vision that articulates the future, allowing the org to work backward with clarity and strategic focus. • Craft and experience obsessed. You care deeply about how things feel, not just how they function. You polish the details like transitions, motion, and accessibility. You hold a high bar for delight and have a portfolio of shipped consumer product work across web and native mobile that demonstrates this. • Systems thinker. You see the full picture. You think about how a single interaction fits into a broader experience, how personalized experiences connect across the Babylist ecosystem, and how the design system enables all of it. • AI-native practitioner. You use AI tools to prototype, explore, and iterate at speed. You stay close to the craft, review work at depth, and can build when building is the fastest path to impact. You lead from a place of real craft knowledge and hands-on understanding of what it takes to ship. • Human-and-data-centered. You know how to leverage (and plan and run) generative and evaluative research to unlock actionable insights that guide product decisions. You bring concrete qualitative and quantitative evidence into design decisions and share clear, persuasive design rationale via concise and impactful communication. • Industry aware and pattern fluent. You stay current with modern product design to borrow what’s proven and challenge what’s stale. You know the interaction patterns, design system conventions, and digital product best practices that have become table stakes, and when to apply them or evolve them. • Clear and critical thinker. You cut through complexity with thoughtful synthesis of competing inputs, stress-testing assumptions, and communicate your point of view with extreme clarity. You don’t mistake collaboration for consensus and encourage productive conflict, preferring to surface misalignment early to accelerate and de-risk decisions. • Outcome owner. You don’t celebrate shipping, you own impact. You instrument your own work, track whether it’s moving the right metrics, and hold yourself and your partners accountable for meaningful results. • Mentor and multiplier. You develop and inspire designers through mentoring. You give direct, honest feedback, coach with care and clarity, and create an environment where designers do their be