Principal Product Designer - Experiences

In 1977 Christopher Alexander wrote “A Pattern Language” – a book about architecture and urban planning that proposed a framework of reusable solutions to common design problems. Importantly, this was a toolkit, not a blueprint – allowing for flexibility and creativity to cater to specific needs. This thoughtful approach ensures that the environments created are cohesive and functional, but also allows for them to be beautiful and personal.

In a similar sense, we at Mercury are creating a software environment that allows for the most efficient functionality while still being something that people can love and make their own. We’re a financial technology company that helps startups spend less time banking* and more time building. We believe that the key to our success revolves around thoughtful, scalable, and beautifully crafted design.

In pursuit of that, we’re looking to hire a principal product designer for our Experiences group. Experiences is the team that looks after Mercury’s core product experience – all of the things that our customers use every single day – the app, dashboard, navigation, notifications, design system, and more. As our principal designer, you’ll play a critical role in defining & designing best-in-class interactions, patterns, and overall product experiences.

What we’re looking for

The person we’re looking for is both a visionary craftsperson and a systems architect – someone who can set the standard for exceptional craft while also ensuring that beauty and elegance are systematized and scalable. They should be seen as the company’s highest-craft designer, someone others look to for inspiration, taste, and guidance.

They will sit across the entire Experiences org, and will be called upon to tackle projects that extend across the whole product and company. Examples of this include re-working the overall product navigation, defining global patterns such as search and chat, or refreshing the visual language of our design system.

Our design team consists of 40+ people who love to solve complex problems through design, but are equally passionate about cultivating, guiding, and inspiring each other.

*Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.

What you will do at Mercury

1. Take ownership of larger, horizontal opportunities that shape the core of Mercury’s product. Through this work, you’ll drive exceptional quality & craft, setting the bar for the design team and inspiring better work across the discipline
2. Partner with other designers on high-priority & complex projects to help get things across the finish line while upleveling the work

Key Responsibilities

• Drive design excellence and craft across Mercury. This includes visual design, interaction design / prototyping, and systems design
• Work alongside our product teams and executive leadership to make sure we’re building things in a systematic fashion and with the utmost quality
• Operate across the entire design stack, including speccing projects, designing workflows, detailed interactions & prototypes, high-fidelity visuals, and ensuring quality implementation
• Contribute to Mercury’s Design System, ensuring it is both beautiful and practical
• Think and act like a design architect – structuring navigation, information architecture, and how all Mercury products fit together cohesively
• Translate high-craft design into scalable systems and patterns that integrate smoothly into product work
• Mentor other designers on the team, leading by example to uplevel everyone’s skills

We believe a successful candidate will have some of the following qualities:

• 10+ years of experience in the design industry
• Enjoy leading high-complexity projects with a broad set of stakeholders
• Ability to successfully leverage the right types of artifacts (presentations, prototypes, etc) and communicate at the right altitude to influence company strategy
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional partners to define product strategy
• Ability to design whole systems, not just interface elements or static pages
• Ability to rapidly prototype large scale concepts as well as smaller, more thoughtful individual interactions
• Experience and interest in the entire design stack, including UI/UX, visual design, and interaction design
• Kindness and humility in everyday interactions
• Enjoying working with and mentoring fellow designers of all levels

The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options), and benefits. Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:

• US employees (any location): $ 269,700–337,100 USD
• Canadian employees (any location): 254,900–318,600 CAD

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on January 22, 2024. Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here.

#LI-SS1