Principal Product Designer - Generative AI

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to large, Fortune 100 enterprises with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.

Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.

Upwork Labs is Upwork’s rapid experimentation and incubation team, focused on 0-to-1 efforts that seek to have a profound impact on our customers and drive a step-change function in our business. Our charter is to create Upwork’s next $100M revenue stream and, to get there, we’re looking to bring on an exceptional, entrepreneurial Principal Product Designer who loves solving customer problems and exploring new ways to not only serve our clients and freelancers but truly delight them. We’re looking for someone who is well-versed in working with a cross-functional team, who can quickly build new prototypes, fail fast, and iterate. 

Your Responsibilities:

• Develop a deep understanding of Upwork’s customers, product, business, and competitive landscape to identify new areas for exploration.
• Work with Product and UXR to generate a backlog of ideas that are aligned with Upwork’s goals and customer needs.
• Support multiple work streams and different initiatives at once, while connecting dots across all product experiences. 
• Create user flows, wireframes, and high fidelity prototypes.
• Design within existing, and help to create new, design standards to contribute to our design systems.
• Partner closely with engineering colleagues to better understand and help push our technology current and future. 
• Incubate promising ideas to achieve product-market fit. 
• Collaborate with stakeholders across the organization to ensure that Upwork Labs’ products and initiatives are aligned with the broader company strategy and vision.
• Collaborate with technology, product, and business teams to uncover customer and business needs - then translating them into intuitive and engaging digital experiences
• Participate in translating complex ideas into understandable concepts that evolve and enhance the product experience
• Manage through shifting priorities to provide clear direction and input on product prioritization and support early product definition
• Work with partners and teams across various geographies
• Support effective storytelling and presentation of visual concepts to various stakeholders.

What it Takes to Catch our Eye:

• You have experience building products around emerging technologies. Examples: AR/VR, Alexa, AI, Interfaceless Design, wearables, Google Spotlight, etc. 
• You think beyond traditional Product Design experiences/screens and have experience with conversational UX/Ui. 
• You are curious about haptics, and new ways of designing as it pertains to AI and beyond.  
• You have numerous design tricks and solutions in your arsenal and can quickly see a variety of solutions to a problem. 
• In addition to being a great UX designer you have a portfolio of work that demonstrates excellent visual design skills. 
• You like rapid environments and building great experiences around business intent and customer insights.
• You thrive in a feedback focused environment and seek input from stakeholders and teammates early and often.
• You efficiently manage your time, quickly switch context,  juggle multiple projects and consistently communicate progress with your manager and the team
• You thrive in a changing environment and have a process, but are not afraid to throw it out or modify it as needed. 
• You are a storyteller and can weave and share compelling narratives around research findings and design concepts.
• You gather and integrate feedback, influence stakeholders and create energy for ideas or initiative.
• Information Architecture experience is a plus.

The annual base salary for this position in California and Washington ranges from $170,000 - $230,000. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salary for this position in California and Washington, and individual base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Additionally, this position is eligible for the annual bonus plan or sales incentive plan and eligibility to participate in our long term equity incentive program.

Come change how the world works.

At Upwork, you’ll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals.  While we have physical offices in San Francisco and Chicago, currently we also support hiring of corporate full-time employees in 19 states in the United States. Please speak with a member of our recruitment team to determine whether you are located in a state in which we are hiring corporate full-time employees. 

Our vibrant culture is built on shared values and our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster amazing teams, put our community first, and have a bias toward action. We encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work and grow together through development opportunities, mentorship, and employee resource groups. Oh yeah, we’ve also got amazing benefits.

Check out our Life at Upwork page to learn more about the employee experience.   

Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics...