Principal Designer
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AI Summary
Help make the world more hospitable
The hospitality industry is uniquely human, and it deserves technology that’s just as inspiring as the people behind it. At Mews, we’re transforming the industry with a platform that helps hotels run smarter, move faster and create better guest experiences.
You’ll work with smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. You’ll have autonomy and the trust to make good decisions and move quickly. And you’ll enjoy a real sense of purpose as you see the impact of what we’re building.
If you’re motivated by ownership, curiosity and meaningful impact, and are driven to deliver consistent high performance, you’ll feel at home here.
About the role
Let's get into the specifics. It’s impossible to capture every nuance of a role – especially at a rapidly growing company like Mews – but if we had to distil it into a job description (which we do because this is a job description), it would be this:
Design at scale is only as good as the substrate underneath it. The Principal Designer is the person who builds and maintains that substrate across the division – the design system, shared agents and skills, research engines, and the architectural standards that let tribes move fast without drifting apart.
This is a senior individual contributor role. You won't manage a team. Your leverage is craft, not headcount. You'll work directly with the VP and partner with Staff Designers across tribes – connecting their context into something coherent at the division level, and building the systems that raise the ceiling for everyone doing design work at Mews.
What you'll do
- Build and maintain the division's shared design foundation – the design system, cross-tribe agents and skills, research and discovery engines, design architecture, principles and standards.
- Hold the multi-year view. Write clearly about what design across the division will need that it doesn't yet have, and drive towards it with enough patience and conviction to see it through.
- Partner with Staff Designers so that tribe-level design substrates compose into a coherent whole rather than a collection of parallel efforts.
- Act as the VP's right hand on the most complex cross-tribe design problems – the ones that don't fit neatly inside any single tribe's scope.
- Contribute craft feedback and calibration input into Director and Staff Designer performance reviews.
- Encode judgment into systems. Turn design thinking into reusable leverage – components, tokens, patterns, agents, shared skills – rather than one-off artifacts that live and die with a single project.
What we're looking for
- A body of shipped, high-quality design work and demonstrable taste. Senior enough to be credible across multiple tribes without needing to prove it.
- Multi-year thinking. The ability to operate beyond the current quarter and to encode that thinking into systems and agents that outlast any single initiative.
- A genuine taste for the unglamorous. Cross-tribe seams, shared substrate, and connective-tissue work don't carry a team's name on them. You need to find that kind of work genuinely satisfying.
- High AI fluency. You build leverage at scale – design agents, shared skills, systematized research – because you understand that the highest-value contribution at this level is rarely the artifact you made yourself.
- Comfort working as a force-multiplier for an executive without needing the title or formal authority that typically goes with that kind of influence.
💰 Salary range:
Pay range location A - UK
Pay range location B - Czech Republic
Pay range location C - Ireland
Pay range location D - Spain
Pay range location E - USA
Pay Transparency at Mews
Salary ranges are provided in good faith and reflect current market conditions and internal pay structures. Final compensation may be adjusted based on funding, budget constraints, or exceptional candidate qualifications, but will remain within reasonable proximity to the stated range.
This salary disclosure is provided in compliance with applicable pay transparency legislation. We are committed to equal pay practices and prohibit salary history inquiries during our recruitment process.
If the location you're applying from wasn't originally advertised for this role, salary range information is available upon request at any point during the application/interview process - your recruiter will be able to help.
What’s in it for you?
Our success is powered by our incredible people, supported by benefits that help them thrive.
Global benefits
No matter where you’re based, you’ll enjoy:
- Unlimited paid holiday (yes, really)
- Participation in our company share program
- Paid parental leave (6 months fully paid for primary caregivers, 2 months for secondary, available after one year of service)
- An annual Learning budget of €300 (and more for high performers) to support your development
- Monthly "EDGE" time to Explore, Develop, Grow, and Elevate yourself
- A work from anywhere policy with flexibility to work abroad for a few weeks each year
- Relocation options, available after one year
- Flexible, hybrid working options
- A home office setup budget to make your workspace your own and a monthly work-from-home allowance
- Claude tokens, so you can automate workflows and build smarter, more efficient ways of working
Local benefits
You'll receive additional benefits that vary by location, from healthcare and retirement plans to team events, socials and other perks. Ask us about it during your interview process.
Life at Mews
We’re an equal opportunities employer. We value teams that reflect the diversity of the customers and communities we serve. Different perspectives make better ideas, stronger products and a more welcoming company.
We also believe transparency is important when deciding if you're the right fit. Mews is an ambitious, high-pressure environment of continuous learning and high standards. Success here requires resilience, adaptability and a willingness to solve difficult problems.
A few things that define how we work:
- High autonomy means high responsibility. People are expected to take ownership and drive outcomes. There isn’t a detailed playbook for everything, and that’s part of what makes the work challenging – and rewarding.
- Change is constant. We’re growing quickly and adapting as we scale. Teams, processes and priorities continue to evolve, and only people who stay curious and agile will thrive.
- We’re remote-first, not relationship-free. Flexibility is core to how we work, but strong relationships still matter. Our teams are global, so we need expert collaborators and communicators to help us move forward together.
- AI is an integral part of our processes. It’s not here to steal people’s jobs, but to amplify efficiency and productivity. We’re motivated to proactively use the technology to seek out better ways of working and share our findings with the rest of the company.
If there's anything we can do to support you during the application process, let us know.
We don't discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other protected characteristic.
One final thing: don't hold back. If you don't meet 100% of the criteria in this job description but you're certain you could make a big impact, apply. Everyone should have equal access to opportunities, and we're committed to providing an inclusive experience.
If Mews sounds like the kind of environment where you'd thrive, we'd love to hear from you.
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