Principal UX Designer (Ref: 197754)

Retail stores, pet products and essential care services form the foundation of this organisation’s work across the United States. Since 1986, our client has helped people care for dogs, cats, birds, fish, reptiles and small pets through an integrated offering that includes grooming, training, boarding and veterinary support. Its scale and breadth create a complex customer experience landscape, connecting shopping decisions with practical guidance and ongoing services that enrich the lives of pets and their families.

The Principal UX Designer will establish experience direction for products and services that support pet parents across retail and care journeys. This senior individual contributor role combines strategic leadership, hands-on design and cross-functional influence, translating customer needs, behavioural insight and business priorities into experiences that are clear, useful and connected.

Success will involve bringing structure to ambiguous problems, aligning stakeholders around compelling experience visions and improving the quality of decisions from early discovery through delivery. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, the role will operate across a broad ecosystem where digital interactions, physical retail and service experiences must work together seamlessly.

You will be expected to raise the standard of UX practice through strong methods, thoughtful critique and persuasive communication. The strongest candidate will balance long-term experience strategy with the practical detail required to make journeys easier, more intuitive and more valuable for pet parents.

• Set experience strategy and design direction for priority customer journeys spanning retail, products and pet-care services.
• Investigate complex, poorly defined problems through research, journey analysis, service mapping and collaborative exploration.
• Convert customer and business insights into experience principles, concepts, interaction models and actionable design recommendations.
• Lead the creation of end-to-end journeys that connect digital touchpoints with store-based and service-led interactions.
• Develop clear narratives, artefacts and presentations that enable senior stakeholders to understand and support design decisions.
• Partner with product, technology, research, content, marketing and operations teams throughout discovery, delivery and iteration.
• Use prototypes, testing and feedback to validate assumptions, resolve usability issues and strengthen proposed solutions.
• Identify gaps in experience consistency, accessibility and usability, then advocate for improvements across relevant platforms.
• Provide constructive critique, mentorship and design leadership that improves the capability of colleagues and partner teams.
• Represent customer needs in prioritisation discussions while maintaining awareness of commercial, operational and technical constraints.

• Extensive professional experience in UX, product design, service design or a closely related discipline, including work on complex ecosystems or interconnected journeys.
• A portfolio demonstrating strategic thinking, sophisticated interaction design and measurable influence on customer or business outcomes.
• Strong command of user-centred design methods, including research synthesis, journey mapping, information architecture, prototyping and usability evaluation.
• Experience defining experience vision, principles or frameworks and translating them into practical direction for delivery teams.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively with incomplete information, frame the right problem and move work towards a credible decision.
• Confidence influencing senior stakeholders through concise storytelling, evidence-based recommendations and well-reasoned design rationale.
• Proven experience working with multidisciplinary teams across discovery, prioritisation, delivery and post-launch improvement.
• Ability to balance customer value, commercial objectives, operational realities, technical feasibility and accessibility considerations.
• Strong facilitation skills, with the ability to lead workshops, align groups and create momentum around difficult decisions.
• Commitment to inclusive, accessible and equitable experiences for a diverse population of pet parents.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the judgement to adapt detail and approach to different audiences.
• Experience in retail, consumer services, marketplaces, healthcare or another high-volume customer environment would be advantageous.

• Principal-level scope to influence experiences across a nationally recognised retail and pet-care ecosystem.
• Meaningful customer impact through work that helps pet parents access products, guidance and services for animals with diverse needs.
• Exposure to a varied portfolio of challenges spanning digital commerce, physical retail, grooming, training, boarding and veterinary care.
• A senior design environment where strategic thinking, research-informed decisions and high-quality execution are valued.
• Opportunities to shape UX standards, strengthen design practice and mentor others across a large organisation.
• Access to cross-functional partnerships with product, technology, research, operations and service specialists.
• A competitive compensation and benefits package aligned with the scope and seniority of the position.
• Professional development support designed to sustain continued growth in leadership, design craft and strategic influence.

The position is based in Phoenix, Arizona, and is suited to a principal-level designer who can connect enterprise strategy with the realities of customer and service delivery. Work will require comfort moving between broad ecosystem thinking and detailed design decisions, while maintaining a consistent focus on accessibility, clarity and customer value.

Applicants should be prepared to present selected portfolio work that explains the original challenge, their role, the methods used, key trade-offs and the outcome achieved. Experience improving complex consumer or service experiences will transfer well, even where direct pet-retail experience is not part of the background.