Principal UX Designer

Principal UX Designer

Mississauga, Austin, Remote

Principal UX Designer 

Role Summary 

As a Principal UX Designer at Upshop, you will own the evolution of our Design Platform and Design System while acting as both a senior craft practitioner and mentor to the design organization. In this role, you will have the opportunity to be a platform-minded design leader, partnering with other PMs to shape and operationalize Upshop 360 platform across all product suites. You will shape direction through hands-on contribution and thoughtful influence, helping the team make decisions confidently in ambiguity and complexity.  

  You are a player-coach: a strategic thinker who leads by doing, builds with your hands, and elevates others’ work through mentorship and example. You will help define the future of Upshop’s design ecosystem — from foundational components to interaction patterns and scalable UX paradigms — ensuring consistency, coherence, and quality across products.  

  This role requires a strong blend of senior UX craft, systems thinking, advanced prototyping, cross-functional influence, and coaching experience. 

What You’ll Do 

Design Platform & System Leadership 

• Own and evolve the Upshop Design Platform and System: components, guidelines, interaction language, motion principles, and shared patterns.  

• Partner with engineering to ensure consistency, scalability, performance, and technical feasibility at platform scale.  

• Define and document standards for how design is expressed across products — from tokens to complex state behaviors.  

• Advocate for accessibility, performance, and inclusive design across the system. 

Hands-On UX & Interaction Craft 

• Create and iterate high-fidelity prototypes, interaction models, and design artifacts that clarify intent and drive alignment. 

• Use prototypes as a primary language for exploration, communication, and decision-making. 

• Translate research insights, user data, and business goals into elegant, scalable solutions.  

Player-Coach Leadership 

• Serve as a mentor and coach: provide regular design critique, career guidance, and hands-on support for more junior designers. 

• Lead and facilitate cross-disciplinary workshops to solve complex UX challenges collaboratively 

• Elevate team craft through shared best practices, tooling improvements, and patterns for reuse. 

Cross-Functional Collaboration 

• Partner deeply with Product, Engineering, and Brand teams to shape outcomes that balance user needs with business strategy. 

• Influence product direction through strategic reasoning and exceptional design judgment 

• Represent design decisions to senior leadership and stakeholders with clarity and confidence. 

Working in Ambiguity & Evolving Practice 

• Thrive in exploratory environments where problems are undefined and outcomes are emerging. 

• Define and refine processes that help teams navigate ambiguity while maintaining velocity and quality. 

Qualifications 

Experience 

•  7+ years of UX / product design experience with a strong portfolio of work that demonstrates both strategic depth and craft excellence. 

• Experience creating and scaling design systems or shared UX platforms in complex multi-product portfolios across different medium (web, tablet, mobile)  

• Proven track record of mentoring designers and elevating team quality. 

Skills & Expertise 

• Hands-on design fluency: end-to-end interaction design, advanced prototyping (Figma), motion where applicable.  

• Deep systems thinking: ability to decompose and organize design patterns that scale across products and teams. 

• Excellent communication: ability to articulate decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences. 

• Comfort working with engineering on implementation patterns, constraints, and performance realities. 

• Strong understanding of user-centered design, accessibility, and usability best practices.  

• Experience contributing code to UI component libraries: React, Tailwind, Design Tokens, shadcn, CSS-in-JS; able to meaningfully engage on component structure and implementation quality. 

• Familiarity with analytics data used to inform design decisions 

• Experience in high-growth SaaS or platform organizations 

What Makes You Successful Here 

• You set direction through clarity of thought and strength of craft, not hierarchy. 

• You enjoy making complexity feel simple for others - both in product and in how design works. 

• You are motivated by empowering others, sharing craft expertise, and defining scalable design strategies. 

• You embrace ambiguity and drive forward with both curiosity and discipline. 

Portfolio Requirement 

An online portfolio is required and should highlight: 

• Design system thinking and platform-level impact 

• High-fidelity prototypes and interaction work 

• Examples of coaching, mentoring, or elevating team outcomes 

The estimated pay ranges for this role are as follows:

• $120,000 - 170,000 CAD