Director of Product Design

Who you are

• 10+ years of product design experience, with at least 3+ years leading teams
• A player-coach mindset-excited to mentor, but equally passionate about designing and solving problems hands-on
• Strong portfolio showcasing interaction and visual design skills, with a track record of shipping successful products
• Proven success designing and scaling customer-facing experiences across a complex funnel (acquisition through retention)
• Deep expertise in interaction design, systems thinking, and user-centered design
• Strong understanding of search, discovery, personalization, and taxonomy design principles
• Experience in e-commerce, marketplaces, or live shopping platforms is a major plus
• A strong collaborator who thrives at the intersection of product, business, and user needs
• A portfolio that demonstrates thoughtful, elegant solutions to complex problems
• If you’re an experienced design leader who loves craft, strategy, and collaboration, we’d love to hear from you!

What the job involves

• We’re looking for a strategic and inspiring Director of Product Design to lead our Buyer Design team, the group responsible for shaping the end-to-end experience for millions of users navigating our platform
• As the design leader overseeing the entire buyer journey, you’ll drive the strategy and execution for everything from customer acquisition, activation, to retention and re-engagement. This includes onboarding, discovery surfaces (browse, search, ranking, personalization, taxonomy), the live shopping experience, customer service, our games team, and customer service flows
• You’ll be a true player-coach, equally comfortable building and developing a high-performing design team as you are rolling up your sleeves and doing the work yourself. You’ll help shape the team, establish clear career paths, mentor designers, and create an environment where people can grow and do their best work
• As a leader, you’ll help define the design strategy and set a clear vision for what our experiences can become, partnering closely with product, engineering, research, and business teams to turn that vision into a roadmap for the team
• As a practitioner, you’ll stay close to the work. You’ll move fluidly from defining the long-term experience vision to tackling specific product and feature-level design challenges - exploring concepts, prototyping ideas, and helping bring the details to life. This role is for someone who can lead through both direction and craft, knowing when to empower the team and when to jump in and design alongside them
• Lead and scale a high-performing team of product designers across the buyer funnel
• Define and drive the vision, strategy, and execution for the buyer experience in collaboration with cross-functional partners
• Partner with research, data, and product to develop deep customer empathy and inform high-impact design decisions
• Shape intuitive, elegant systems across discovery, live shopping, and post-purchase experiences
• Ensure our experiences are accessible, inclusive, and delightfully human
• Champion design quality and consistency across surfaces while enabling speed and iteration
• Nurture a strong design culture through mentorship, feedback, and high standards for craft and thinking
• Represent design in executive conversations and influence company-wide priorities
• You’ll help define how the next generation of users discover, shop, and engage with sellers and communities they love. You’ll work alongside a passionate and ambitious team that values joy, experimentation, and deep customer empathy. And you’ll help build a design culture where creativity and performance go hand in hand
• Reporting Structure:
• Jon Malkemus - VP of Design

Benefits

• Wellness: Health, dental, vision, and life insurance plans. We also cover some of the cost for your dependents as well.
• Compensation: Generous compensation, including a competitive base salary and equity. Whatnot offers monthly reimbursement for internet and phone costs, along with a one-time home office set-up allowance. Whatnot offers a pension plan and matches employee contributions of up to 4% of the employee’s base salary.
• Recharge: Whatnot gives you the freedom to take time off as you see fit. And, we take company-wide Winter and Summer breaks so we can recharge. Whatnot provides a monthly allowance for wellness expenses. We know that to take care of our customers, we have to take care of ourselves. Supplemental h…