Principal Product Desginer (Ref: 197754)

Operating across pet retail and specialist care services, our client provides products and practical support for dogs, cats, birds, fish, reptiles and small pets. Established in 1986, this organisation connects stores with grooming, training, boarding and veterinary offerings, creating a broad service ecosystem for pet parents. Its work combines everyday retail convenience with guidance and care designed to improve the wellbeing of pets throughout their lives.

That breadth creates a substantial product design landscape, spanning customer discovery, shopping journeys, service access and ongoing pet-care relationships. Digital experiences must serve varied needs while remaining clear, useful and consistent across multiple touchpoints.

As Principal Product Designer, you will define the design direction for complex products and experiences that support customers across the pet-care journey. You will operate at strategic and hands-on levels, turning ambiguous opportunities into clear product outcomes and helping teams make confident decisions grounded in customer needs, business priorities and operational realities.

Success in this role will mean raising the quality and influence of product design across the organisation. You will establish a compelling vision, guide work from discovery through delivery, strengthen design practice and ensure experiences across retail and specialist services feel purposeful, accessible and connected.

• Set the product design vision for high-priority initiatives and translate strategic goals into actionable experience direction.
• Lead discovery across complex customer, commercial and operational challenges, identifying opportunities with meaningful business and customer value.
• Frame ambiguous problems, develop service and product concepts, and communicate recommended directions to senior stakeholders.
• Design end-to-end experiences across commerce, service discovery, appointment journeys, account management and ongoing pet care.
• Partner with product, engineering, research, analytics, operations and marketing teams to move ideas from exploration into measurable outcomes.
• Use qualitative and quantitative evidence to test assumptions, refine solutions and prioritise the most valuable improvements.
• Establish patterns, principles and quality standards that support coherent experiences across channels and customer touchpoints.
• Mentor designers, strengthen critique and decision-making practices, and elevate the organisation’s overall product design capability.

• Extensive experience delivering digital products and services as a senior, staff or principal product designer.
• A portfolio demonstrating strategic thinking, complex problem-solving and strong end-to-end execution.
• Proven ability to lead design through ambiguity, from initial opportunity framing to shipped product and measured impact.
• Experience influencing senior stakeholders and aligning diverse teams around a clear product or service direction.
• Strong capability across user research, journey mapping, interaction design, prototyping, visual design and usability evaluation.
• Understanding of how customer experience decisions connect with commercial performance, operational feasibility and technical constraints.
• Experience creating scalable design systems, reusable patterns or governance approaches across multiple products or channels.
• Demonstrated success mentoring designers and contributing to a mature, evidence-led design culture.

• Work on products and services that support pet parents across shopping, care and specialist service experiences.
• Influence design strategy across a broad retail ecosystem with visible customer and organisational impact.
• Shape connected experiences spanning stores, digital commerce, grooming, training, boarding and veterinary care.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary partners on initiatives that combine customer value with practical business outcomes.
• Access opportunities to develop design practice, mentor others and broaden strategic leadership experience.
• Operate in a role with meaningful scope to improve how product decisions are made and delivered.

The position is based in Phoenix, Arizona, and offers the scope to influence experiences used by a diverse community of pet parents. Candidates should be prepared to present portfolio work that explains the problem, their contribution, the decisions made, the trade-offs considered and the measurable result.

Applicants with experience in retail, marketplaces, subscriptions, healthcare, service design or other high-volume customer ecosystems may bring especially relevant perspective. The strongest candidates will combine strategic range with the judgement to simplify complex journeys and deliver practical improvements.