Product Designer (principal-level)

Synthesia Synthesia · Multimodal · London, United Kingdom · Product

Principal Product Designer for Synthesia, a leading AI video platform for business. The role focuses on leading design for complex product surfaces, operating at a senior individual contributor level with strategic influence. Responsibilities include defining design direction, reframing problems, partnering with Product and Engineering, and raising the craft bar across the design team. Requires a track record of high-impact design in ambiguous spaces, strong systems thinking, strategic instincts, and experience mentoring designers.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead large, complex, or ambiguous design initiatives across teams and surfaces - owning direction, success criteria, and long-term UX vision, not just execution.
  2. Reframe problems, anticipate downstream risks, and bring clarity to spaces where product direction is still forming.
  3. Operate as a strategic partner to Product and Engineering leads: helping define the right problems to solve, shaping long-term product bets, and bringing fresh insight to prioritisation decisions.
  4. Prototype and test interaction models quickly, knowing when to go high-fidelity and when a rough concept moves things faster.
  5. Drive alignment across teams and stakeholders beyond your immediate group - communicating complex ideas with confidence, clarity, and empathy, and helping leadership make sense of ambiguity.

Skills

Required

  • Product Design
  • UX Design
  • Systems Thinking
  • Strategic Thinking
  • Problem Reframing
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Communication
  • Mentoring
  • Design Leadership

Nice to have

  • AI Product Design
  • Enterprise Software Design
  • Video Platform Design

What the JD emphasized

  • leading design across Synthesia's most complex and high-impact product surfaces
  • senior IC role
  • highest level of individual craft and strategic influence
  • shape direction across product domains
  • setting the standard for what great design looks like
  • intersection of product strategy, systems thinking, and exceptional craft
  • define design direction for large, ambiguous problem spaces
  • anticipate risks before they become blockers
  • reframe problems in ways that unlock better outcomes
  • design leadership that goes beyond execution
  • helps the company make the right bets
  • raises the craft bar across the whole team
  • builds the conditions for great design to thrive at scale
  • track record of leading high-impact design work across large, ambiguous, or cross-functional problem spaces
  • delivering outcomes that meaningfully shift product quality, clarity, or direction
  • Recognised excellence in craft, in at least one design discipline
  • history of raising the standard for those around you
  • Comfort operating without perfect clarity
  • turn ambiguous problem spaces into crisp direction
  • Systems thinking
  • understand how product architecture, AI capabilities, and organisational constraints shape what's possible in the UX
  • Strong strategic instincts
  • frame the right problems
  • challenge assumptions
  • contribute meaningfully to roadmap and prioritisation decisions
  • Experience aligning diverse stakeholders and cross-functional teams around design decisions
  • communicating with confidence and empathy at every level
  • Experience mentoring senior designers
  • contributing to team culture, hiring, or practice-building
  • A genuine point of view on where product design is heading
  • credibility and communication skills to bring others along