Principal Visual Designer

Principal Visual Designer

Location: 100% Remote (US Candidates)

Reports To: Design Team Lead

Compensation: $110 -$120/hr DOE

Duration: Contract, 12+ Months, 40 hrs per week

We are Design Citizen, a human-centered talent studio partnering with ambitious organizations to build thoughtful, impactful products and experiences through design.

Our client, a global leader at the intersection of health and science, is investing in a small incubation team within its design organization that takes on early, high-ambiguity work. Projects include AI-assisted tools and workflows, design standards platforms, new product concepts, and emerging technology pilots.

We are seeking a Principal Visual Designer with exceptional craft to bring that work to life and make it stand out.

Why This Role Matters

This team operates at the front edge of how our client designs and builds. The ideas are ambitious, and they need a designer who can make them look and feel as good as they work. Some projects arrive with an established style and a working prototype. Others are still finding their visual identity and need someone with the taste and confidence to define it.

We’re looking for a visual designer with a product mindset: someone whose work is polished, expressive, and unmistakably crafted, and who brings enough product thinking to make sure that craft serves the experience. You’ll move across a portfolio of concurrent initiatives, partnering daily with creative technologists, developers, and strategists, and presenting regularly to design leadership.

Agency experience is a big plus here. Designers who’ve built digital experiences for major brands tend to bring the polish, pace, and presentation skills this team needs.

This is a role for someone whose portfolio makes people stop scrolling.

What You Will Do

Visual & Product Design

• Elevate tools and products across concurrent initiatives, with a focus on AI-enabled experiences, bringing them from early concept to a refined, beautifully executed final product
• Define and evolve the visual language for new products, including type, color, layout, iconography, motion, and composition
• Bring a high level of polish and detail to every touchpoint, from interaction and flow to micro-interactions and copy
• Create compelling concepts and high-fidelity prototypes that sell a vision to leadership, then carry that quality through to production
• Work within component-based design systems, knowing when to follow existing patterns and when to push them visually

Craft Leadership

• Set the visual bar for the team, producing work others reference and build from
• Lead critique with a strong point of view on aesthetics, hierarchy, and detail
• Contribute to AI-assisted ways of working by authoring reusable patterns and resources, and use the tools the team builds daily
• Keep design system compliance and accessibility built in from the start
• Mentor designers and contribute actively to the broader design practice

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with creative technologists and developers to make sure visual quality survives implementation
• Support validation and testing, and refine the work based on what you learn
• Present design rationale persuasively at every level, and build trust with collaborators across the organization

What You Bring

• 5 to 7+ years of experience in product and digital experience design, ideally including time at a design agency or studio, with a strong emphasis on visual design
• A portfolio that leads with standout visual execution: refined typography, sophisticated layout and color, and products that feel distinctive and polished, with process shown alongside final work
• Agency or studio experience designing digital products and experiences for well-known brands, where visual quality and creative ambition are the standard
• Comfort moving between brand-level creative thinking and detailed product design, bringing a brand’s identity to life across digital touchpoints
• A background or strong foundation in visual, brand, or interface design, paired with solid product thinking
• An expert eye for detail and a clear point of view on what makes a product feel premium
• Fluency with component-based design systems, and the range to adapt an enterprise system to each project’s style
• Motion and prototyping skills that bring interfaces to life
• Working fluency with AI-assisted design tools, and real curiosi…