Lead Product Designer
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AI Summary
Lead the visual identity and design culture of Bluesky while managing a team of 2-4 product designers. This player-coach role involves owning complex design projects end-to-end and partnering with engineering and product leadership to shape the roadmap.
About Us
What if social media worked more like the web — open, customizable, and full of possibility? That’s the future Bluesky is building. Our app is already used daily by millions, but it’s just the beginning: beneath it is a protocol supporting an entire ecosystem of apps, all connected by the same social graph.
We’re looking for a lead product designer who can do both: ship excellent design work themselves and lead a small team of designers doing the same. This is a player-coach role; you’ll be in the work every day, owning significant design problems end-to-end while also directing and growing the people around you.
About The Role
As our lead designer, you’ll define Bluesky’s visual identity and design culture. With your help, we’ll depart substantially from the current look and feel of the app and drive toward an entirely new vision for how social media can feel.
You’ll own complex, high-stakes design work yourself while directing a team of 2–4 designers, helping them grow and produce their best work. You will establish the craft standards, lead critiques, and serve as the design voice that product and engineering rely on for crucial decision-making.
This is a role for someone energized by both sides of the equation, solving hard product problems with their own hands and building a team culture where great design thrives. You’ll have substantial influence over what Bluesky builds, how it looks and feels, and how design grows as a discipline here.
Key Responsibilities
Design work
- Own significant design projects end-to-end — from early ideation and exploration through execution, launch, and post-release iteration
- Bring strong product judgment to decisions about scope, sequencing, and quality, including knowing when not to ship something
- Design clear, intuitive interaction flows and interfaces that feel cohesive and intentional across iOS, Android, and web
- Drive and evolve Bluesky’s visual language, design system, and holistic identity as the product and team grow
- Stay close to users: reviewing real usage, synthesizing feedback, and using those insights to improve the product
- Sweat the details that matter: copy, states, hierarchy, accessibility, and interaction polish
Team leadership
- Manage a team of 2–4 product designers, including 1:1s, performance reviews, goal-setting, and career development
- Mentor and grow designers at all levels, helping them take on more ownership and develop their craft
- Lead design critiques and reviews, raising the quality bar across the team through specific, high-standard feedback
- Hire and onboard design talent as the team grows
- Help define how design works at Bluesky: how we collaborate, how we prioritize, and how we hold ourselves to a high bar
Cross-functional influence
- Partner with product and engineering leadership to define problems, shape roadmaps, and make strategic tradeoffs
- Represent design in cross-functional conversations, bringing clarity and a strong point of view to ambiguous decisions
- Champion the user across the organization, translating research and qualitative signal into product direction
Skills and Experience
- Have 10+ years of experience designing digital products, with a strong portfolio of shipped work; at least 3–5 years leading product design for social, platforms, and/or consumer digital products
- Have experience directly managing designers, including performance reviews, hiring, and career development, and genuinely enjoy it
- Are still deeply hands-on with the craft: you design, you prototype, you sweat the details, and you don’t want to stop
- Have strong visual design skills, including aesthetic judgment around layout, typography, and hierarchy
- Bring a strong, articulate design point of view and can represent design confidently to leadership and cross-functional partners
- Have deep experience building and evolving design systems that scale with a growing team and product
- Are comfortable influencing product direction, not just executing on it — you’ve shaped roadmaps and helped define what to build and why
- Bring strong user empathy and can translate messy, qualitative signal into actionable product insight
- Are highly proficient with Figma, including advanced component and system work, and comfortable building interactive prototypes
- Hold certainty lightly, take feedback well, and iterate quickly
We’re especially excited if you have
- Experience leading design on a consumer social or community product
- Strong opinions about what makes social apps feel great, and the ability to articulate and defend them
- A track record of growing designers into more senior roles through mentorship, sponsorship, and stretch opportunities
- Experience contributing to product and brand identity at a company level
- Experience running or commissioning user research and turning insights into product improvements
- Familiarity with decentralized or open-protocol products, or genuine curiosity about what they make possible
- A love-hate relationship with auto layout and a habit of pushing it to its absolute limits
Additional notes
The anticipated base salary range for this position is $190,000 - 258,000, excluding equity. Equity will be considered in the total compensation package. The final base salary for this role will be based on the individual’s geographic location, as well as experience level, skill set, training, licenses and certifications.
Please include links to your portfolio or examples of past work in your cover letter or resume.
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