Principal Product Designer, Vertical AI

Podium is hiring a Principal Product Designer to lead design for their AI efforts in the Automotive vertical. This is a senior, high-ownership design role where you'll define user experience strategy, design outcomes, and long-term design vision.

Responsibilities

• Stay close to customers - talk regularly with dealership staff across sales, service, parts, and finance to understand how their workflows function and what success looks like
• Co-own vertical strategy with product - collaborate on where we go deeper, where we expand, and how Podium becomes the leading applied-AI solution in Auto through user insights and design research
• Own the Auto vertical design - lead design strategy, user experience standards, and design quality for this high-value segment
• Design AI agent experiences that help the customer - design and ship outcome-driven agents and interfaces that make complex AI automation feel simple and approachable
• Identify new design opportunities for Auto dealers - research and design new workflows that drive revenue for our Automotive customers
• Work across the company - partner with product, engineering, partnerships, finance, legal, sales, onboarding, and customer success to deliver real experiences
• Roll up your sleeves - be hands-on with detailed design work, from user research and wireframes to prototyping and testing

Requirements

• Demonstrate high agency - consistently identifying design opportunities and driving projects forward with minimal oversight or direction
• Have 8-10+ years of product design experience, with emphasis on designing technical products
• Have deep understanding of AI interface design, human-in-the-loop patterns, and designing for complex workflows
• Focus deeply on customer problems, turning real insights into compelling prototypes, design concepts, and demos that win customers

Key Skills

• Fluency with AI tools and workflows - you're comfortable "tool stitching" - combining Figma with AI image generators, code assistants, and prototyping tools to accelerate your design process and make ideas real faster
• Experience designing for AI agents, chatbots, or conversational interfaces
• Startup, founding team, or entrepreneurial design experience
• Experience designing for complex user workflows and business software
• Experience leading design for business initiatives beyond just feature development
• Success designing for partner integrations or multi-platform experiences