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Salary: USD 270,000 - 295,000 / annual
The Athletic is seeking a VP of Product Design to lead the design vision and execution for its sports media app. Reporting to the Chief Product Officer, this role combines strategic leadership with hands-on design craft.
Key Responsibilities:
- Own product vision and prototyping: develop working prototypes and opinionated concepts that demonstrate the next-generation sports app, driving strategic visioning with cross-functional leadership and executive alignment.
- Provide strategic voice in product direction: bring data-backed perspectives to planning, partner with VP Engineering, VP Data, and CPO on business priorities and metrics, and ensure design has meaningful influence on product decisions.
- Lead day-to-day craft: stay actively involved in design work—reviewing flows, working in Figma, and prototyping alongside your team.
- Drive AI-native transformation: set direction for how design operates in an AI-native world, covering tools, workflows, and team structure to increase both velocity and craft quality.
- Build and manage design organization: recruit, coach, and manage a design team of approximately 10 people with clear accountability for delivery.
- Collaborate across leadership: work as part of the executive leadership team, partnering closely with engineering, product, data, marketing, and commercial leaders.
Requirements:
- Passionate sports fan who uses the product, has informed opinions, and brings that passion to your work.
- Design leader with a proven track record of hands-on craft at senior levels; recent personal work samples required.
- Experience leading a design organization through significant transformation, ideally involving AI tooling and workflow changes, at a consumer product company shipping at scale.
- Strong, well-argued opinions about what makes sports products or comparable habit-forming consumer products great, with conviction to defend those views in rooms with product and engineering leaders.
- Comfort operating in ambiguity.
- Nice to have: experience starting or running your own company or side project.
- Willingness to travel regularly despite remote-based arrangement.
