Principal Product Designer

We're growing our Product Design organization to support a strategic evolution: from a suite of point solutions into an integrated ELD platform. Design is at the center of this shift. As we connect compliance, instruction, and assessment into unified workflows, we need designers who can define what the experience should be, not just what it looks like and shape solutions that feel like one coherent system, not a collection of tools.
We're looking for an experienced Principal Product Designer who can lead UX strategy and evolve our systems. This role blends systems thinking, cross-R&D design leadership, and setting the bar for AI-assisted design workflows across the team. It’s a hands-on role as well. You'll work across the product suite and collaborate closely with senior Product and Engineering peers to define strategy and execute to improve our design system (Backpack).
Product Culture
We are organized into small, durable product teams that develop solutions in specific domains. Our teams are cross-functional—product, design, and engineering work so closely together that we call ourselves DevPro and rarely meet in functional silos. We focus on outcomes over output, which means we engage users early, validate hypotheses through research and prototyping, and iterate rapidly toward high-confidence solutions.
While we work in separate teams, we prioritize integration and consistency of our solutions meaning consistency isn’t a nice to have, it’s a critical part of our end goal.
We expect designers to integrate AI tools into their workflows as on-demand collaborators that can help explore ideas quickly: generating variations, stress-testing concepts, and moving from problem to prototype faster than traditional methods allow. This isn't about replacing craft; it's about using AI to expand what's possible within a time constraint. You'll be evaluated on what you're able to produce with these tools, not just your manual output.
We value Product Designers who think strategically and are able to look at problems from multiple angles, weigh tradeoffs, and articulate how a solution meets the needs of both users and the business. We celebrate accountability to outcomes: conducting experiments, adjusting strategy based on learnings, and delivering products that change behavior and drive real value.
This is a hybrid role based out of our headquarters in Boston, MA.

Within 1 month, you will:

• Build a clear picture of the strategic context facing Ellevation and what role design plays. Audit Backpack's current state and identify gaps.
• Build relationships with Design team as well as Product and Engineering leadership. Understand team rituals, skill levels, and workflow patterns across designers.

Within 3 months, you will:

• Own the roadmap for Backpack's evolution. Ship improvements that address high-priority gaps.
• Establish yourself as the go-to for cross-team UX decisions. Begin identifying opportunities to raise craft and improve design workflows across the team.

Within 6 months, you will:

• Backpack is actively enabling integrated experiences—teams are using it to ship faster and more consistently.
• You're shaping UX strategy for initiatives that span multiple teams.
• You're mentoring designers and elevating the quality bar through feedback and process improvements.

Within 12 months, you will:

• You've materially improved how design works at Ellevation.
• Backpack is a competitive advantage. You're a trusted voice in R&D strategy conversations, and the team's craft and AI fluency have measurably improved under your influence.

About You

• You have 10+ years of demonstrated success as a cross-functional designer in a B2B SaaS or adjacent environment.
• You've owned or significantly shaped a design system and understand the tradeoffs between flexibility and consistency.
• You're comfortable working autonomously, setting your own direction, and influencing without authority.
• You're AI-fluent—using LLM-assisted prototyping to accelerate ideation and validation, freeing you to focus on strategy and systems thinking.
• You're accountable to outcomes, not just output. You run experiments, learn from what ships, and measure success by whether the product changes behavior.
• You go to the source. You've led user research and usability testing in the field, and you don't design from assumptions.
• You seek feedback and confront hard truths. Craft is a practice, not a credential—you iterate with users, engineers, and data.
• You bring diverse perspectives into your process and design with empathy for users unlike yourself.
• You think in systems, creating coherent experiences across workflows rather than isolated features.
• You elevate others through feedback, pairing