Lead design strategy and execution for product initiatives, collaborate with teams, and mentor designers while focusing on user experience and innovative solutions.
About Us
Powered by one of the largest global newsrooms in sports media, The Athletic brings sports fans the most comprehensive stories about the teams, sports and athletes they love. The Athletic’s newsroom of 500+ full-time staff delivers in-depth coverage of hundreds of professional and college teams across more than 47 North American markets and all 20 football clubs in the English Premier League, as well as many Championship clubs.
We're looking for a Staff Product Designer to lead design strategy and execution across key product initiatives. You'll work autonomously to identify and prioritize high-impact work—balancing thoughtful strategy with hands-on execution to create vibrant, intuitive experiences for sports fans worldwide. Leading projects across the full spectrum from rapid shipping to exploratory innovation, you'll collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and data teams while mentoring fellow designers and elevating design thinking across the organization. We're looking for world-class designers whose craft balances expert visual and interactive design, clear communication, shipping velocity, and a deep understanding of user needs—someone who thrives with ownership, moves fast without sacrificing quality, and drives meaningful impact for our users, product, and business.
Responsibilities
- Design and ship high-quality experiences that drive user, product, and business impact. You dive in to define and solve significantly complex, unscoped problems that set the benchmark for product design quality.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams, partnering with Product Managers, Engineers, Content Operations, SEO Strategists, Product Analysts, and fellow designers to lead concepts from ideation to execution.
- Support and direct product strategy, ensuring we're asking the right questions and solving for the most important user needs.
- Lead larger-scale strategic and vision-oriented projects across the team.
- Lead and conduct design and user research as necessary.
- Contribute to the Product Design team through mentorship, knowledge-sharing, and elevating our Design System.
- Own and lead Product Design cultural events and rituals.
- Continually identify new ways to improve both your work and the work of the discipline and team overall, including through the use of new tooling and AI.
- Understand the competitive environment of design and our product. Stay on top of new technologies (like AI) and innovative user experiences, especially within sports apps, sports media, and news related products.
Requirements
- Demonstrable expertise in designing shipped, large-scale product experiences across web and native applications.
- Strong visual and interaction design skills, as exemplified in an online portfolio or presentation.
- Expert communication skills, especially in presenting design decisions that meet user, product, and business needs.
- Expertise in successfully collaborating with engineers, product managers, other XFN partners, and stakeholders with a high standard of quality and professionalism.
- Expertise in setting up collaborative working structures with other designers on projects and in establishing feedback and critique.
- Ability to manage your time effectively across several projects and priorities.
- Expert Figma skills and knowledge of other design tools.
- Experience with prototyping and animation as a means to explore and convey design solutions.
- Experience incorporating AI tooling into the design process.
- Subject matter expertise related to sports and/or media. You have a strong understanding of what makes a great sports and/or fandom-related product, and ideas on how we can make our experience even better.
- An eagerness to try new things, innovate, and learn and teach others — and a willingness to learn from mistakes.
The annual base salary range for this role is $160,000.00 USD - $180,000.00 USD. The total compensation offered for this position may vary based on factors such as education, experience, skills, and location.
For roles in the U.S., dependent on your role, you may be eligible for variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock. Benefits may include medical, dental and vision benefits, Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s), a company-matching 401(k) plan, paid vacation, paid sick days, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement and professional development programs.
For roles outside of the U.S., information on benefits will be provided during the interview process.
We are excited to learn more about you and your experience. To keep our hiring process as fair and authentic as possible, we ask that you submit your own work and not use GenAI tools to generate substantive content during the application and interview process. If you are a candidate for a technical role, we will let you know what specific tools you are permitted to use for your technical assessment.
The Athletic Media Company is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. The Athletic will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
Click here to review our Applicant Privacy Notice, which describes how and when The Athletic Media Company collects, uses, and shares certain personal information of job applicants and prospective employees.
Beware of fraudulent job recruiting schemes! Our recruiters use [email protected] exclusively, and our team members will use an email address with @theathletic.com domain. We do not conduct interviews via text or instant message and we do not ask candidates to download software, to purchase equipment through us, or to provide sensitive personally identifiable information, such as bank accounts or social security numbers. If you have been contacted by someone claiming to be a member of the recruiting/HR team at The Athletic but operating from a different email address about a job offer, please report it as potential job fraud to the law enforcement and to [email protected].
The Athletic San Francisco, California, USA Office
San Francisco, CA, United States
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