Black Airplane is a digital product agency dedicated to solving complex business problems through innovative technology and design. We focus on developing impactful products by combining technical expertise with a commitment to creative excellence.
We're looking for a world-class Staff Product Designer who can lead complex design initiatives while serving as a strategic design partner to both our team and our clients. This individual will drive substantial contributions to highly complex projects, mentor other designers, and champion the adoption of AI-enhanced design workflows. You'll shape design systems across multiple teams, participate in pre-sales efforts, and consistently deliver solutions that have measurable impact on both user experience and business outcomes.
What We're Looking For
- Design leader with 5-8 years of experience and a proven track record of shipping multiple large products and complex design systems
- Strategic contributor who provides strategic input on design decisions and shapes broad architecture across client projects
- Systems designer skilled at synthesizing complex business requirements, user research, and technical constraints into coherent design strategies
- AI advocate who champions AI tool adoption across teams and develops AI-enhanced workflows that multiply team efficiency
- Team multiplier who facilitates cross-team work and serves as a role model and mentor to all team members
- Business contributor capable of accurate project estimation and active participation in pre-sales efforts to support client acquisition
- Quality driver known for consistently delivering large systems involving multiple teams on time and with exceptional quality
Responsibilities
- Lead design initiatives for highly complex client projects, anticipating product-level design issues and making strategic decisions to prevent them while providing strategic input that impacts long-term success
- Champion AI tool adoption across the design team, developing AI-enhanced workflows, and training others on advanced AI prototyping techniques to multiply team effectiveness
- Design complex systems involving multiple teams and stakeholders, mastering the full input-process-output (systems thinking) framework from business requirements to comprehensive developer handoff packages
- Participate in pre-sales efforts to assess design feasibility and requirements, providing reliable project estimates that inform client proposals and resource planning strategies
- Facilitate cross-team collaboration by breaking down complex problems into solutions, knowns, and unknowns swiftly while serving as a role model for design excellence across all project teams
- Drive process leadership by leading internal conversations about major design process directions, driving wide-team consensus and mentoring junior and senior designers to foster continuous learning
Qualifications
- Educational foundation with Bachelor's Degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or equivalent industry experience demonstrating comprehensive design expertise
- Extensive experience of 5-8 years in product design with demonstrated expertise & a supporting portfolio in UI and UX design principles across web and mobile platforms with multiple successful product launches
- Advanced tool proficiency with expert-level Figma skills including design systems, design tokens, and engineer annotations, plus ability to anticipate broad technical changes
- AI integration expertise with proven experience championing AI tool adoption, developing AI-enhanced workflows using ChatGPT, Claude, Lovable, v0, Figma Make, and/or others for work and team efficiency
- Systems thinking capabilities with ability to design complex systems, make strategic trade-offs supporting business initiatives, and deliver measurable client satisfaction outcomes
- Leadership and estimation skills including accurate project estimation for complex projects, pre-sales assessment experience, exceptional communication abilities, and proven mentoring experience that enhances team performance
This is a full-time, remote position (US only).
Black Airplane is a fully remote-friendly environment. Work location is flexible if approved by Black Airplane, except that the position may not be performed remotely from AK, CA, HI, MA, NY, OR, PA, WA, or outside of the United States.
Top Skills
What We Do
Black Airplane is a digital product agency built to solve real business problems. Whether you're a hard-charging founder with a big idea or an industry leader with a need for change, our team blends deep technical expertise with uncommon creativity to help you create a product that wins. No matter the challenge you're facing, our team of aces will help you transform your good idea into a damn good product.
