Lead and grow a small team of senior product designers as a player-coach: hire, coach, set design vision and craft standards, ship high-leverage design work, partner with Product/Engineering/Marketing, and represent design across cross-functional forums to deliver coherent consumer product experiences.
The Role
Why This Role Matters
What You’ll Own
Who We’re Looking For
Why Join Linktree
Our Story
Where and How We Work
How we’ll help you thrive
We are looking for a Principal Design Manager to lead and grow a team of senior individual-contributor designers, shaping how creators discover, organize, and share content through Linktree. This is a player-coach role: you'll manage, coach, and develop a small team of senior designers while staying hands-on with design yourself, personally owning some of the hardest or most ambiguous problems.
You'll set design vision and craft standards for your area, partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing, and be accountable for both the quality of your team's work and your own. As the team scales, this role is on a path to grow into a broader leadership remit over time. As a member of the Design leadership team, you'll help define how Linktree scales design as the company grows.
A consumer product at this scale is made or broken by design. The hard part isn't adding another pair of hands; it's the leadership to raise the whole team's ceiling — coaching senior designers, holding the craft bar, and turning scattered effort into shipped, coherent product. This role exists to be that multiplier: a player-coach close enough to the work to model the standard, and generous enough to grow the people who carry it.
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of senior individual-contributor designers.
- Stay hands-on as a player-coach — personally owning and shipping design work on the highest-leverage or most ambiguous problems.
- Set design vision and craft direction for your area, ensuring quality and consistency across your team's work.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing leaders to align design with business priorities.
- Own hiring and team composition for your area, adapting as the business and the team scale.
- Establish and evolve craft standards, critique practices, and design operating rhythms for the team.
- Represent design in cross-functional forums, translating design work into business impact.
- Balance individual craft contribution with management, modelling the standard you expect of the team.
- 10+ years of design experience, including experience managing and growing individual contributors (managing managers is a plus, not a requirement).
- A genuine player-coach — still hands-on and excellent at the craft, and energized by both doing the work and developing others.
- Proven track record of shipping high-quality design within a consumer product or creator / marketplace platform.
- Demonstrated ability to hire, coach, develop, and retain strong individual-contributor designers, especially at the senior level.
- Strong craft judgment and the ability to give — and model — high-leverage feedback.
- Experience partnering with Product, Engineering, and Marketing leaders.
- Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into a clear design direction.
- Comfort balancing personal craft work with team leadership, and good judgment on when to do versus delegate.
- Excellent written and verbal communication.
- A growth mindset toward AI-accelerated design tools and how they change workflows.
Why Join Linktree
- Be part of a rapidly growing company that's shaping the future of how people connect online.
- Contribute to a product that impacts millions of users worldwide, driving innovation in digital experiences.
- Shape the user experience for one of the most popular platforms globally, impacting millions of users.
- Be part of a collaborative and inclusive culture that values diversity and innovation.
- Enjoy competitive compensation, flexible work arrangements, and robust professional development opportunities.
Linktree is committed to providing a fair and competitive compensation package including cash, equity, and benefits. The base salary offered for this role is targeted at $250,000 - $290,000 for roles based in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Final offers depend on multiple factors including location, experience, expertise, and role scope, and may vary from the range listed.
P.S. If you don’t tick every box in this listing, please don’t rule yourself out. We take pride in inclusion and hiring incredible human beings with great potential over ticking boxes – so if this role resonates with you, hit that apply button!
We’re on a mission to empower anyone to curate, grow, and monetize their digital universe. We created the “link in bio” category — and we’re just getting started. From creators, artists, and entrepreneurs to global brands, we’re redefining how people connect with their communities, showcase their content and promote products — all in one link.
Today, a community of 70+ million use Linktree, including icons like Adidas, TikTok, the UN Environmental Program, The NFL, Manchester United, World Central Kitchen, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, and Selena Gomez. With 48,000 new accounts created every day, Linktree is the fastest-growing leader in our space.
We’ve teamed up with some of the world’s biggest platforms including TikTok, Snap, YouTube, GoFundMe, Spotify, Google, Stripe, Reddit, Laylo, and Kajabi, to unify Linkers’ digital spaces, and we partner with retail brands Amazon, Nike, Nordstrom Target, Sephora, Vuori, and more to share products they love.
We’re a tight-knit, passionate team building best-in-class tools that make online presence simple, powerful, and yours. If you're excited by the idea of shaping a new category, setting the standard, and making space for everyone to be seen and succeed, we’d love to meet you.
We're a global, diverse team spread across continents with offices in London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and San Francisco. We work together flexibly and you can choose the setup that works best for you: fully remote or a hybrid mix of office and home.
We offer autonomy in how you structure your days and weeks. While we’re mindful of time zones and occasionally collaborate outside the typical 9–5, we lean into async work to keep things flowing. Our culture is family-friendly and Zoom-casual where kids, pets, and delivery drivers are welcome.
How we’ll help you thrive
Our approach to benefits considers the whole person and the unique contributions they bring to Linktree. We want the experience at Linktree to be one that enables people to truly thrive so we can Go Further Together (one of our values). Some ways we support you:
- An annual wellbeing allowance to use on things like (but not limited to) fitness memberships, development courses, childcare, travel, charitable donations, pet insurance, home office set-up - the choice is yours!
- 100% coverage (and 80% for your dependents) of your monthly premiums for medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance for US-based employees.
- Employer contribution towards your retirement.
- Generous time off for vacation, holidays, parental leave, volunteer time, and other categories.
- Employee stock option program - we want each and every employee to share in the company’s success.
At Linktree, we believe in promoting a culture that celebrates unique backgrounds, talents, and experiences, and we’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are creating an inclusive workplace where every individual feels valued, respected, and has equal opportunities to thrive. We aim to foster a diverse and inclusive environment where all team members have a sense of belonging. Linktree welcomes all people regardless of sex, gender identity, race, ethnicity, disability, pregnancy, age, or other lived experience. If you require accommodations to fully participate in our opportunities, please don't hesitate to reach us at [email protected] – your needs are important to us.
Linktree San Francisco, California, USA Office
San Francisco, CA, United States, 94107
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