Principal Designer

The posting, as The Trade Desk wrote it

The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising, with over 3,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet — from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more.

Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world’s brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly.

The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges — from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you’re driven to solve meaningful challenges, we’d love to meet you.

What We Do

The Trade Desk is seeking a Principal Design Lead to own and evolve our Digital Playbook and to modernize how our design practice works. Partnering closely with Product, Product Marketing, and Brand, you will set a best-in-class standard for how our platform looks, feels, and evolves.

This is a senior individual-contributor design leadership role for someone who can see around corners on where our product language and platform experience need to go, and who can take that vision from concept through shipped, polished product. You will guide the evolution of our design language and systems so they stay cohesive and scalable as the platform grows and AI reshapes what advertisers and agency partners expect.

You bring deep, hands-on fluency with AI tools and use them to change how design gets done: faster exploration, tighter design-to-build handoff, and higher craft. You will help evolve our workflows, standards, and practices as we modernize, and you will work in lockstep with the design lead driving AI experience vision so the Playbook and product language support AI-powered capabilities consistently across the platform.

You are adept at product and brand integration, storytelling, and visual design, and you can bridge these domains to accelerate our product language and evolution.

This role reports to the Senior Director of UX Design and is a core leader of the UX team’s impact.

What You Will Be Doing

As Principal Design Lead at The Trade Desk, you will:

Own & Evolve the Digital Playbook

• Define, maintain, and evolve the Digital Playbook, including design foundations, style guide, component anatomy, and the guidance that connects them, as the source of truth for how our product and brand show up across the platform
• Set the standards and principles that help teams design with consistency, clarity, and craft
• Keep the Playbook a living resource: adopted in daily work, responsive to product change, and measurable in its impact on qualit

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Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock-based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance. The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as variable compensation-based incentives and commissions. Plus, expected benefits for this role include 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 of 1 hour per 30 hours worked, vacation time for full-time employees up to 120 hours thru the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year. Employees can also purchase The Trade Desk stock at a discount through The Trade Desk’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

The Trade Desk also offers a competitive benefits package. Click here to learn more.

Note: Interns are not eligible for variable incentive awards such as stock-based compensation, retirement plan, vacation, tuition reimbursement or parental leave

At the Trade Desk, Base Salary is one part of our competitive total compensation and benefits package and is determined using a salary range. The base salary range for this role is
$182,800 — $335,200 USD

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

Please reach out to us at accommodations@thetradedesk.com to request an accommodation or discuss any accessibility needs you may require to access our Company Website or navigate any part of the hiring process.

When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions.