Digital Product Designer, Principal

Overview

REI is a different kind of company. As a co‑op, we put purpose before profits and act in the long‑term interests of our members. We believe time outside is fundamental to a life well lived, and as a member of the User Experience team, you’ll contribute to REI’s mission to connect every person to the power of the outdoors and engage them in the fight to protect it.

Our designers strive to deliver customer‑centric experiences that are inspiring, inclusive, human, purposeful and trustworthy.

The User Experience (product/platform) team is looking for a Principal Digital Product Designer. In this role, you play a critical role in shaping high‑impact digital experiences across REI’s platforms. You help define product direction, contribute deep craft, and partner closely with product, engineering, research, and brand to deliver work that’s thoughtful, human, inclusive, and aligned with REI’s mission.

In this role, you play a critical role in shaping high‑impact digital experiences across REI’s platforms. You help define product direction, contribute deep craft, and partner closely with product, engineering, research, and brand to deliver work that’s thoughtful, human, inclusive, and aligned with REI’s mission.

You’ll operate as both a lead designer and a cross‑functional partner—comfortable zooming out to long‑term vision and zooming in to hands‑on execution. You’ll guide teams through ambiguity, elevate design quality, influence strategy, and connect work across journeys and systems. You also help support and mentor designers without having full organizational leadership responsibilities.

Candidates must be proactive, responsive, flexible, and able to succeed in a fast‑paced, transforming, collaborative environment without supervision.

Your Planning & Navigating Requirements (the plans the job is responsible for creating and executing, and how the job ensures they are implemented)

• Discovers and frames ambiguous problems and drives solutions for one or more critical products or strategic projects on digital platforms
• Craft artifacts that communicate solutions. Including implementation of prototypes, mockups, task analysis, usability studies, personas, user flows, wireframes, style guides, navigational structures, and affinity diagrams
• Identifies and leads building out design standards and patterns, style guides, and frameworks for our design systems
• Leads new design standards and practices, in collaboration with product, marketing, and engineering teams
• Facilitate collaboration with various product managers, engineers, analytics, research, and ensures that the customer’s desires are being fulfilled
• Contribute to task & dependency analysis, scheduling, and risk mitigation plans
• Champions user research, leads both generative & evaluative User Experience research
• Provide mentorship and coaching to grow team
• Evangelizes design best practices while uncovering novel and unexpected solutions

• 10+ years’ experience in User Experience, interaction design, information architect, Service design or similar plus.
• 3+ years leading projects/mentoring teams.
• Experience in leadership, collaboration, communicating and influencing design strategy.
• Excellent problem‑solving skills and familiarity with technical constraints and limitations when designing for platforms.
• Proficient at building and shipping features/products at a department level, leading the end‑to‑end experience across a variety of platforms.
• Demonstrable track record in leading strategic thinking across a large product space, developing product goals, identifying opportunities and outcomes while continuously developing relationships with cross‑functional peers.
• Experience at developing design standards, patterns, style guides, best practices, and frameworks which are accessible and utilize human‑centered methodologies.
• Experience presenting work to executives, clearly and succinctly articulating the goals and concepts.
• A portfolio demonstrating excellent User Experience design skills for solving complex problems with clear results.
• Bachelor’s degree in Design, HCI, Interaction or similar area, or…