Principal UX Designer job at Upshop in Austin, TX, Mississauga, ON, Canada

Principal UX Designer Mississauga, Austin, Remote Principal UX Designer Role Summary As a Principal UX Designer at Upshop, you will own the evolution of our Design Platform and Design System while acting as both a senior craft practitioner and mentor to the design organization. In this role, you will have the opportunity to be a platform-minded design leader, partnering with other PMs to shape and operationalize Upshop 360 platform across all product suites. You will shape direction through hands-on contribution and thoughtful influence, helping the team make decisions confidently in ambiguity and complexity. You are a player-coach: a strategic thinker who leads by doing, builds with your hands, and elevates others’ work through mentorship and example. You will help define the future of Upshop’s design ecosystem — from foundational components to interaction patterns and scalable UX paradigms — ensuring consistency, coherence, and quality across products. This role requires a strong blend of senior UX craft, systems thinking, advanced prototyping, cross-functional influence, and coaching experience. What You’ll Do Design Platform & System Leadership Own and evolve the Upshop Design Platform and System: components, guidelines, interaction language, motion principles, and shared patterns. Partner with engineering to ensure consistency, scalability, performance, and technical feasibility at platform scale. Define and document standards for how design is expressed across products — from tokens to complex state behaviors. Advocate for accessibility, performance, and inclusive design across the system. Hands-On UX & Interaction Craft Create and iterate high-fidelity prototypes, interaction models, and design artifacts that clarify intent and drive alignment. Use prototypes as a primary language for exploration, communication, and decision-making. Translate research insights, user data, and business goals into elegant, scalable solutions. Player-Coach Leadership Serve as a mentor and coach: provide regular design critique, career guidance, and hands-on support for more junior designers. Lead and facilitate cross-disciplinary workshops to solve complex UX challenges collaboratively Elevate team craft through shared best practices, tooling improvements, and patterns for reuse. Cross-Functional Collaboration Partner deeply with Product, Engineering, and Brand teams to shape outcomes that balance user needs with business strategy. Influence product direction through strategic reasoning and exceptional design judgment Represent design decisions to senior leadership and stakeholders with clarity and confidence. Working in Ambiguity & Evolving Practice Thrive in exploratory environments where problems are undefined and outcomes are emerging. Define and refine processes that help teams navigate ambiguity while maintaining velocity and quality. Qualifications Experience 7+ years of UX / product design experience with a strong portfolio of work that demonstrates both strategic depth and craft excellence. Experience creating and scaling design systems or shared UX platforms in complex multi-product portfolios across different medium (web, tablet, mobile) Proven track record of mentoring designers and elevating team quality. Skills & Expertise Hands-on design fluency: end-to-end interaction design, advanced prototyping (Figma), motion where applicable. Deep systems thinking: ability to decompose and organize design patterns that scale across products and teams. Excellent communication: ability to articulate decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences. Comfort working with engineering on implementation patterns, constraints, and performance realities. Strong understanding of user-centered design, accessibility, and usability best practices. Experience contributing code to UI component libraries: React, Tailwind, Design Tokens, shadcn, CSS-in-JS; able to meaningfully engage on component structure and implementation quality. Familiarity with analytics data used to inform design decisions Experience in high-growth SaaS or platform organizations What Makes You Successful Here You set direction through clarity of thought and strength of craft, not hierarchy. You enjoy making complexity feel simple for others - both in product and in how design works. You are motivated by empowering others, sharing craft expertise, and defining scalable design strategies. You embrace ambiguity and drive forward with both curiosity and discipline. Portfolio Requirement An online portfolio is required and should highlight: Design system thinking and platform-level impact High-fidelity prototypes and interaction work Examples of coaching, mentoring, or elevating team outcomes The estimated pay ranges for this role are as follows: $120,000 - 170,000 CAD Apply tot his job Apply To this Job