Overview
Ready to Be the Connective Tissue for an AI-Native Design Studio?
As a Principal Design Lead, you won't own a single surface or feature area. You'll be the senior driver who moves across Vision Setting, AI Incubation, Craft & Systems, and End-to-End Product Quality, wherever the Studio needs someone who can take an ambiguous problem and turn it into real momentum. Some weeks that means shaping an experience vision. Other weeks it means unblocking a stuck workstream, raising the craft bar on a critical surface, or stepping in to drive an AI Incubation project outright when the Studio needs senior hands on it. This is genuinely connective tissue work.
This role exists because senior craft alone isn't the bottleneck in an AI-native studio. The bottleneck is having someone senior enough to bring people into a problem, build momentum without a manager coordinating it for them, and turn nothing into something good, fast. We're looking for a design facilitator and driver as much as a design craftsperson: someone who gets energized by ambiguity, brings others along instead of going heads-down alone, and can operate at real speed while raising the quality bar across all of mid-market, not just protecting it.
If you're excited about being a floating force multiplier for a design studio that's actively inventing what AI-native product design looks like, not executing someone else's playbook, we'd love to hear from you.
Responsibilities
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Flex across Vision Setting, AI Incubation, Craft & Systems, and End-to-End Product Quality based on where the Studio has the biggest gap in any given cycle, rather than owning a single fixed surface
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Take ideas from ambiguous or nothing to something concrete and good, independently and fast
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Act as a design facilitator: bring other designers, PMs, and engineers into a problem, build shared ownership, and keep initiatives moving without needing a manager to broker every handoff
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Step in to drive an AI Incubation project end to end when the Studio needs it, taking a fast-moving, ambiguous 0-to-1 effort and giving it real product shape
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Hold and encourage a high bar of craft in whichever area you're operating, mentoring mid-level designers and unblocking ambiguity they can't yet resolve on their own
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Partner closely with engineering, pushing the boundaries of what's possible while understanding technical constraints and using them to shape better solutions
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Represent the Studio's point of view in cross-functional and platform-level conversations, translating design direction into language product and engineering leaders act on
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Actively use AI-powered prototyping tools to move from concept to validated direction at a pace that matches the ambition of the work
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Advocate for higher craft and quality standards across the Studio
Qualifications
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10+ years of hands-on product design experience in enterprise, platform, or complex B2B products, with demonstrated range across multiple problem spaces rather than a single specialty
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A track record of driving ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives to outcomes, ideally where you weren't the most senior person in the room by title but became the person others rallied around
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Genuine comfort operating at the intersection of design, product, and engineering, with the emotional intelligence to partner with engineers under pressure, not the instinct to out-argue them
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Deep, hands-on fluency with AI as a design material, how AI-native products should look, feel, and behave, and how to design experiences that make powerful AI capabilities feel simple. This is core to the role, not a bonus. What we're not looking for is an engineer in designer's clothing: your depth should show up in product judgment and craft, not in a need to go toe to toe with engineering on implementation
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Strong facilitation instincts: able to bring people into a problem, build alignment, and create forward motion without formal authority
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A bias toward fast, iterative validation over polished-but-slow execution, including fluency with AI-powered design and prototyping tools such as Claude, Cursor, or similar
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Demonstrated mentorship of other designers, with judgment about when to unblock someone directly versus when to build their capability
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Excellent executive communication skills: able to represent design thinking to senior stakeholders clearly and persuasively
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A Bachelor's degree in Product Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, or a related field
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A portfolio that shows range across problem types and altitudes, not just depth in one area, along with evidence of facilitation and cross-functional leadership, not just craft output
Intuit provides a competitive compensation package with a strong pay for performance rewards approach. This position may be eligible for a cash bonus, equity rewards and benefits, in accordance with our applicable plans and programs (see more about our compensation and benefits at Intuit®: Careers | Benefits). Pay offered is based on factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and work location. To drive ongoing fair pay for employees, Intuit conducts regular comparisons across categories of ethnicity and gender.
The Expected Base Pay Range For This Position Is
Mountain View $239,000 - $323,000
New York $233,500- $316,000
San Francisco Howard Street, CA $239,000- $323,000
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