Principal Product Designer

The posting, as Babylist wrote it

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 tab

[…]
r career advancement

• We believe technology and data can solve hard problems
• We're committed to career progression and performance-based advancement

Benefits

• Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Retirement savings plan with company matching and flexible spending accounts
• Generous paid parental leave and PTO
• Winter Wonder Week: the whole company takes a paid week off at the end of the year, whether or not you celebrate anything, so everyone's out at once and comes back refreshed
• Remote work stipend to set up your office
• Perks for physical, mental, and emotional health, parenting, childcare, and financial planning

Important Notices

Recorded Interviews. Babylist uses an interview recording tool to record and transcribe interviews for evaluation purposes in accordance with applicable privacy laws. By participating in an interview, you consent to this recording and transcription.

Interview Integrity. AI is part of how we work at Babylist. We expect you to use it too. Your application and interviews should still reflect you and your own thinking. We'll tell you when AI is encouraged. Misrepresentation at any stage may result in removal from consideration for this and future roles.

How We Review Applications We use AI throughout our hiring process to help review, screen, and assess applications. These tools support our team's review; they do not replace it, and every hiring decision is made by a person.

Connections at Babylist. If you have a family member or close personal relationship with a current Babylist employee, please let your recruiter know. This helps us keep our process fair and transparent for everyone.

Protect Yourself from Scams. All official outreach comes from the Babylist Talent Team via @babylist.com email addresses only. We will never ask for payment or personal financial information. If you receive outreach via WhatsApp, Telegram, or a non-Babylist email, it's not us. Verify open roles at babylist.com/careers.