Principal Product Designer- United States

About Very (Remote – USA) Very is a fully distributed technology firm led by expert problem-solvers who create efficient, scalable solutions that move commercial, industrial, and consumer products from pilot to production in record time. We believe that real innovation happens in the grind, working shoulder to shoulder with clients who are building the future. Our team thrives on that energy. When we’re not helping clients deliver business-critical outcomes, we’re refining our craft and celebrating what it means to do hard things well. We’ve built a collaborative, tight-knit culture that thrives in both remote and in-person settings. We’ve won numerous workplace awards over the years, including Great Place to Work certification and recognition from Parity.org as a Best Company for Women to Advance. Our clients include well-known brands like Vizio, Peloton, Clear, iHeart Radio, and Fellowes — all determined to leverage connected devices and AI to drive meaningful impact. Our job is simple: help them win. About This Role This is our most senior individual contributor design role. Not a management track, a craft and leverage one. A principal still does the work: running the full arc of design on a project, from the fog of an undefined problem through launch. But the reason we want you at this level is what you do beyond any single project. You move across our work to make sure it's set up for every designer to succeed within it. You shape how we sell and scope new engagements. You set the craft standards and build the tools and processes the whole team works from. You go deep and you own the outcome, wherever you're plugged in. This role reports to the Director of Design. We're embracing AI and figuring out where it actually belongs. Using it everywhere isn't the goal, and using it doesn't mean we stop doing craft. We think AI is good at expanding on patterns, not creating them, and at giving us specific tools to design more fluidly across design and code. We pick our spots, and we never take human judgment out of the process. A principal doesn't just adopt that approach, you help define it. What You’ll Be Working On Shape the work before it starts. Partner with sales through pre-sales and scoping. Act as a first point of contact for clients and delivery teams. Do the work. UX, UI, interactive prototyping, research, data visualization, and design systems. Run discovery workshops and alignment sessions. Facilitate feedback with clients and their users. Partner closely with engineering. Make sure design QA happens. Set the bar for everyone else. Define the processes and craft standards the team works from, and make sure they're held across projects. Build the tooling that makes the team faster and better in an AI-enabled world. Mentor designers and lift the craft of the people around you. Minimum Qualifications Experience A minimum of 5 years in a design lead role, setting direction on projects. (For context, that usually means around a decade in design overall.) A track record of launching real products, not just polished concepts. Zero-to-one and incremental work both. A history of mentoring designers and raising the craft of a team, not just shipping your own work. A point of view on where AI belongs in a design practice, and the drive to build the tools that put it there. Communication above all. Writing matters, but what matters more is your ability to speak, articulate your thinking, and carry a room. Self-direction and ownership. You scope your work, manage its blast radius, and know when to push back or say no. Comfort with ambiguity, at both the design and business layer. Design systems thinking as a core competency. Technical Capabilities UX and UI design Interactive prototyping User research Data visualization Design systems Nice to Have IoT and connected-product experience React, HTML, and CSS (our team does this; we can teach it) Experience designing for data-heavy or analytical products, where the challenge is making complex information feel clear and actionable Experience designing agentic or AI-driven products, you understand how to design for systems that act, not just respond. Location and Residency Must be authorized to work in the United States of America without sponsorship. How we’ll evaluate you A portfolio is required, alongside your resume. We want your best work, and only you can decide what that means for a team like Very. We're looking for two things at once. Breadth: a quick read on your range and craft across a body of work. And depth: be ready to take us deep into two projects, walking us through the audit, the goals, the collaboration, the outcomes, and what you'd do differently. We'll spend most of our time there. How you present it is up to you. We care more about the thinking than the packaging. Be ready to go deep live, in the moment and without prep. You should know your work front to back. And while you'll use AI on the job every day, our interview focuses on your ability to