Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Black Airplane is a digital product agency that designs and builds software for various organizations. They are seeking a Staff Product Designer to lead client engagements, mentor the design team, and advance their AI-enhanced design workflows.
Responsibilities
- Lead complex client engagements end-to-end — discovery, strategy, IA, design, prototype, handoff. Anticipate the issues that derail design teams late in a project, and resolve them early
- Push our AI practice forward. Run experiments, share what's working, retire what isn't, and help move us toward an AI-native design team
- Build durable design systems within complex engagements: tokens, components, documentation, and the conventions that hold them together
- Participate in pre-sales. You'll have a voice in how we scope new work. Estimate complex engagements with confidence, surface design and technical risks early, and shape proposals we can actually deliver
- Mentor the designers around you. Set the bar on craft. Help the team adopt new tools and new ways of working
- Speak up. Surface the broken process before someone else has to. Bring solutions, not just problems
Skills
- 5–8 years in product design, at the complexity you'd be expected to lead at Black Airplane. Formal degree optional — we hire on the work
- Expert Figma — design systems, tokens, prototyping, engineering handoff. Comfortable working close to code
- Real, demonstrable use of AI tooling in your design process: prototyping in code (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar), AI-assisted ideation and research, and a working point of view on what to use when
- Excellent communication — written, verbal, and in front of clients. You can present and defend your work, and keep the conversation productive when a client pushes back
- Accurate estimation on complex projects
- Pre-sales experience is a plus
Company Overview