Principal Product Designer

Title: Principal Product Designer

Location: New York, New York, United States

Job Description:

Want to help everyday Americans invest and build wealth? Financial inequality is increasing, and too many people are getting left behind. At Stash, we’re passionate about democratizing wealth creation through education, advice, and products that help customers achieve greater financial freedom. We also believe in working smarter—leveraging AI and emerging technologies to move faster, operate more efficiently, and focus our time on solving meaningful problems for our customers.

Product Design partners with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Data Science to ship the Stash experience end to end. The team’s job is simple to say and hard to do: make money feel understandable, trustworthy, and actionable for everyday people. Our product’s job is to be a financial advisor in your pocket.

This is a Principal Product Designer role reporting to the VP of Product. You’ll operate as a highly influential individual contributor while helping elevate the broader design organization through mentorship, design leadership, and strong product thinking. You’ll help set direction for the customer experience, simplify complex problems, and drive quality through reviews, systems thinking, and close partnership with Product and Engineering.

You’ll also help the team work in a modern way, including practical use of AI where it speeds up exploration and delivery, with standards that keep the product coherent and responsible.

What you'll do: 

• Keep design human-centered across the journey: research, flows, copy moments, edge cases. Define what “good” looks like for the customer.


• Run the full design arc: pull signal from research, sketch and prototype (using whatever tools make sense, including AI-assisted ones), run tight reviews, hand off specs engineers can build from, and stay involved through launch.


• Show up in roadmap and strategy conversations with Product. Contribute a vision and strong point of view on how we get there.


• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Marketing so the product feels like one brand.


• Help shape how the design team operates: improve critique culture, evolve the design system, encourage reusable patterns, and ensure AI-assisted work still meets a high quality bar.


• Mentor and support other designers through feedback, collaboration, systems thinking, and leading by example through your craft.


• Say no when something isn’t ready. That includes experiences that need clearer disclosure, better fallbacks, or a simpler path before customers see them.


• Strong data-informed product thinking: ability to leverage quantitative data, behavioral insights, experimentation results, and customer signals to inform design decisions, identify opportunities, and continuously improve the user experience.


• Help drive faster and more efficient workflows through thoughtful adoption of AI-assisted tooling, rapid prototyping, and modern design practices.


• Influence product direction through strong storytelling, strategic thinking, and a clear point of view on customer experience.


 

What we're looking for: 

• 8+ years of experience in a fast-paced D2C product design environment.


• Strong principal-level IC craft: you’re deeply hands-on, credible in the details, and capable of leading through influence rather than direct management.


• Player-coach mindset: while this is not a formal people management role, you naturally mentor and elevate other designers through collaboration, feedback, and example-setting.


• Senior product design leadership: strong end-to-end product sense, systems thinking, and a track record shipping great work with Product and Engineering in a fast environment.


• Intellectually curious and self-driven: you push into ambiguity, learn the domain, and move work forward without needing someone to script your week.


• Strong collaborator: Engineering, Product, and Marketing teams are excited to work with you. You build trust across functions and communicate design decisions with clarity and conviction.


• Extreme ownership mindset: you’re a self-starter who raises the bar through your design craft and doesn’t wait to be told what to do.


• Proven ability to make strategic decisions and hold a strong POV on what the product should look and feel like—and the communication skills to get others behind it.


• Experience using Figma and Jira as core tools of your workflow.


• Experience and genuine excitement about leveraging AI to improve design efficiency and process. At Stash, we use Claude Design and Cursor as part of our design workflow.

Helping You Invest in Yourself 

• Comprehensive total rewards package, comprising compensation (salary and equity) and health care benefits 


• Complimentary subscription to Stash+ account 


• Hybrid Work Policy – We operate a hybrid work environment in NYC that prioritizes time together in the office to strengthen teamwork, innovation, and culture, while still allowing for work-from-home flexibility.                  


• Flexible PTO 


• Work-from-home equipment stipends; home internet subsidy


• Paid Parental Leave (offerings for birth giving and non-birth giving parents) Primary & Secondary


• Enhanced health and wellness benefits through One Medical, Gympass, and Maven Health

Salary Range: $171,000 - $255,000

The base salary range represents the reasonably anticipated low and high end of the salary range for this position. Actual salaries will vary and will be based on various factors, such as the candidate’s qualifications, skills, experience and competencies, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data for companies of our size and industry