Medium has a long history of strong design leadership. As we enter a new phase of innovation we will be shaping the future of social publishing for our millions of readers and writers.

At Medium, our mission is to deepen understanding across across the world by building community around shared stories and we invite you to join us. We are looking for a Principal Designer who is passionate about this mission and can bring exceptional craft and fresh insights to the world of reading, writing, and publishing. You’ll help drive and execute an ambitious product design strategy, contributing at both the structural and granular levels that shape our product experiences. If you are hungry for that type of hands-on impact and you are eager to lead, learn, and grow, we’d love to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities

As a key leader in the product design team (currently a small team of four product designers and one researcher), you’ll report to and partner with the Head of Design to shape and enable a culture of excellence. You’ll design world-class experiences alongside engineers, leadership, research, and other designers by exploring and developing ideas and connecting them to business objectives. You will also work closely with our Content and Data teams to bring your ideas to life and to understand the impact of your work. Your influence across projects from start to finish will help shape our most complex, interconnected systems as well as our most delightful customer facing features.

Medium is an environment where designers and engineers are empowered to make good ideas happen. As a senior team member, you will need a deep understanding of our product and a commitment to delivering high quality work. You’re most likely to succeed in this role if you have a mind for business and strategy as well as a love for building and shipping impactful, delightful experiences.

Finally, we take our team culture seriously. You’d be a great fit for this team if you appreciate a high bar for both execution and culture: you are great at what you do, and you’re humble about it, eager to mentor and coach the team around you. We are highly collaborative and looking for someone who is ready to roll up their sleeves and jump right in.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Experience

8+ years designing consumer-facing software
Experience working on social or reading and writing platforms, or in similar industries
Track record of driving complex systems design at scale
Experience shipping, scaling and maintaining design systems
Ability to navigate urgency and ambiguity with a multi-faceted team in a fast-paced environment
Demonstrated industry influence; we’d like to see examples of how you think outside the box and build enthusiasm for your ideas

Interests & Skills

A genuine interest in Medium’s mission and knowledge of our platform
Excellent design sensibilities and instincts that translate well to your UX/UI execution
Informed product design opinions and industry knowledge that reflect current trends
Strong desire for product impact through your designs
Prototyping in Figma or code
Bias toward action; you are outcome-oriented and take responsibility for your impact
You demonstrate good judgment and can balance autonomy with collaboration
Comfort navigating data, from UX metrics to qualitative and quantitative inputs
Strong communication and presentation skills; you can easily relay the “why” behind your work as well as the “what” and “how”
You enjoy and excel at remote work, helping to foster an inclusive team culture

Your application

We require a link or pdf to a strong design portfolio that demonstrates:

Proven product design successes with substantial business impact on a consumer-facing or community-oriented product
A detail-oriented care for your craft and ability to work in systems
Your ability to navigate different fidelities of a project from early concept work to higher fidelity UX/UI execution in the final product
A pursuit of deeper understanding: findings, discoveries, insights or explorations that have allowed you to explore different paths toward an optimal solution

In your cover letter, let us know why you want to work at Medium, what stood out to you from the job description, and why you think you are a good fit for this role.

Benefits

In addition to the new skills you'll pick up, here's what else you'll enjoy by working at Medium:

Working with a fully distributed team: We’re fully remote and have teammates across the U.S. & France
Healthcare benefits covered at 100% for employees and 70% for dependents
Generous parental leave policy & tutoring services through Outschool
Mental health support through Talkspace
Financial wellness support through Northstar
Stipends for wellness, co-working, professional development, wifi and a one-time home office bonus
Unlimited PTO and standard company holidays
A Medium subscription

About Medium

At Medium, we foster an inclusive, supportive, fun, and challenging team environment. We value having a team that is made up of a diverse set of backgrounds and respect the healthy expression of diverse opinions. We embrace experimentation and the examination of all kinds of ideas through reasoning and testing. Come join us as we continue to change the world of digital media.

Medium is an equal opportunity employer.

Read about our story here.

Principal Product Designer