Principal UX Designer

About the Role

Key Responsibilities

• Champion design excellence across the organization by identifying shared UX opportunities, aligning on standards, and raising the bar for craft, coherence, and usability across the platform.
• Collaborate with other UX leads to drive quality and consistency across key product areas, while also owning and executing design strategy for critical pillars of the Kokai platform.
• Help evolve Kokai from functional to delightful by simplifying complexity, improving usability, and addressing core user needs with clarity and purpose.
• Translate ambiguous problem spaces into clear, actionable design opportunities through systems thinking, journey mapping, and deep customer insight.
• Partner closely with Product and Engineering to shape roadmaps, define requirements, and advocate for user-centered, insight-driven decision-making.
• Work alongside UX Research and Data Science to uncover opportunities, validate hypotheses, and inform design direction with data and empathy.
• Contribute to Harbor, the unified design system, to push quality and consistency across all surfaces and components.
• Lead by example through design critiques, mentorship, and collaboration to foster a culture of continuous improvement, excellence, and shared ownership of quality.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Design, HCI, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience (Master's degree preferred).
• 10+ years of experience in product design or UX, including work on enterprise-grade or data-rich applications.
• 4+ years of experience leading high-impact design initiatives or strategic projects across teams or product areas.
• Proven experience working in cross-functional teams, influencing outcomes through collaboration, systems thinking, and storytelling.
• Strong visual and interaction design skills, with a portfolio demonstrating high standards of craft, clarity, and user-centered problem solving.
• Proficiency in Figma and the ability to prototype at multiple levels of fidelity.
• Experience partnering with executive stakeholders and contributing to product vision and roadmap through design leadership.
• Ability to translate complex user needs and business goals into scalable, elegant solutions.
• Familiarity with advertising technology, programmatic platforms, or campaign optimization tools is a strong plus.

Nice to Have

• Experience with advertising technology, programmatic platforms, or campaign optimization tools.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Design, HCI, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Benefits & Perks

• Comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, and vision) with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents.
• Retirement benefits such as a 401k plan and company match.
• Short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance.
• Well-being benefits, reimbursement for certain tuition expenses.
• Parental leave, sick time, vacation time up to 120 hours in the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year.
• Stock-based compensation grants, sales incentives, and commissions.
• Opportunity to purchase company stock at a discount through the Employee Stock Purchase Plan.