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Principal Design Manager

Linktree - San Francisco, CA, USA - Hybrid

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Salary: USD 250,000 - 290,000 / annual

Linktree is seeking a Principal Design Manager to lead and grow a team of senior individual-contributor designers. This is a player-coach role where you'll manage, coach, and develop designers while staying hands-on with design work yourself, personally owning some of the hardest or most ambiguous problems. You'll set design vision and craft standards for your area, partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing, and be accountable for both your team's work quality and your own contributions. As the team scales, this role is positioned to grow into a broader leadership remit over time. You'll be part of the Design leadership team, helping define how Linktree scales design as the company grows. Key responsibilities include: - Lead, coach, and develop a team of senior individual-contributor designers - Stay hands-on as a player-coach, personally owning and shipping design work on high-leverage or ambiguous problems - Set design vision and craft direction for your area, ensuring quality and consistency - Partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing leaders to align design with business priorities - Own hiring and team composition, adapting as the business scales - Establish and evolve craft standards, critique practices, and design operating rhythms - Represent design in cross-functional forums, translating design work into business impact - Balance individual craft contribution with management, modeling the standard you expect You should have 10+ years of design experience, including experience managing and growing individual contributors. You're a genuine player-coach—still hands-on and excellent at the craft, energized by both doing the work and developing others. You have a proven track record shipping high-quality design within consumer products or creator/marketplace platforms, with demonstrated ability to hire, coach, develop, and retain strong senior designers. Linktree is a rapidly growing company on a mission to empower anyone to curate, grow, and monetize their digital universe. With 70+ million users including major brands and creators, the platform is the fastest-growing leader in the link-in-bio space, with 48,000 new accounts created daily.

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