Director of Product Design, Babylist
AI Builder
$244.6-305.7k
+ target 22.5% annual bonus + competitive equity
Senior and Expert level
Remote from US
Online universal baby registry
Be an early applicant
Online universal baby registry
1001+ employees
B2CMarketplaceConsumer GoodseCommerce
Be an early applicant
$244.6-305.7k
+ target 22.5% annual bonus + competitive equity
Senior and Expert level
Remote from US
1001+ employees
B2CMarketplaceConsumer GoodseCommerce
Company mission
To help expecting parents get exactly what they need for the arrival of their new baby.
Role
Who you are
- Strategic visionary. You combine user needs, business priorities, and sharp product and design sense into an inspirational vision that articulates the future, allowing the org to work backward with clarity and strategic focus
- Craft and experience obsessed. You care deeply about how things feel, not just how they function. You polish the details like transitions, motion, and accessibility. You hold a high bar for delight and have a portfolio of shipped consumer product work across web and native mobile that demonstrates this
- Systems thinker. You see the full picture. You think about how a single interaction fits into a broader experience, how Registry flows connect across the Babylist ecosystem, and how the design system enables all of it
- AI-native practitioner-leader. You use AI tools to prototype, explore, and iterate at speed. You stay close to the craft, review work at depth, and can build when building is the fastest path to impact. You lead from a place of real craft knowledge and hands-on understanding of what it takes to ship
- Human-and-data-centered. You know how to leverage (and plan and run) generative and evaluative research to unlock actionable insights that guide product decisions. You bring concrete qualitative and quantitative evidence into design decisions and share clear, persuasive design rationale via concise and impactful communication
- Industry aware and pattern fluent. You stay current with modern product design to borrow what's proven and challenge what's stale. You know the interaction patterns, design system conventions, and digital product best practices that have become table stakes, and when to apply them or evolve them
- Clear and critical thinker. You cut through complexity with thoughtful synthesis of competing inputs, stress-testing assumptions, and communicate your point of view with extreme clarity. You don't mistake collaboration for consensus and encourage productive conflict, preferring to surface misalignment early to accelerate and de-risk decisions
- Outcome owner. You don't celebrate shipping, you own impact. You instrument your own work, track whether it's moving the right metrics, and hold yourself and your org accountable for meaningful results
- People leader. You hire, develop, retain, and inspire a team of designers. You give direct, honest feedback, manage performance with care and clarity, and create an environment where designers do their best work
- Operational leader. You build and maintain the systems, rituals, and processes that allow your team to execute with quality and consistency. You know the difference between process that enables and process that burdens, and you make deliberate choices about both
- Adaptable to change. You select for change, not against it. You jump in where needed, working across team boundaries without waiting for permission. You are humble, low-ego, and biased toward action. You bring curiosity to ambiguity, not anxiety
- Excited about the AI transformation. You believe this is the most interesting moment in modern design careers, and you want to help shape what an AI-first design organization looks like both at Babylist and as a category
What the job involves
- This role is the durable design and experience owner for Registry, accountable for the UX, vision, KPIs, and quality bar that define how it feels
- You translate company goals into clear priorities so your org always knows what to work on and why
- You take bold bets, pushing past safe incrementalism to make the case for step-function improvements — advocating for customers' long-term needs while ensuring business impact
- You epitomize being a builder: getting into the work, codebase, and data directly rather than delegating, standing up prototypes and contributing to production-quality interfaces when that's fastest
- You partner with engineers, PMs, and analysts as peer-builders, setting the standard for what an AI-native designer creates
- You shape the craft standards and operating model that define Design at Babylist, leading the team's transition to AI-native product development at scale
- Reports to the VP, Head of Product Design and Research; sits on the Consumer Tech Leadership team; leads 3–4 product designers
- Own the Registry experience end-to-end. Think holistically about user flows, brand expression, information architecture, and interaction patterns across the full Babylist cross-platform ecosystem. You are accountable for the quality and outcomes of everything your team ships
- Lead with equal parts vision, strategy, and execution. Connect design vision to company strategy and business goals. Articulate where the Registry experience should be in 12-18 months and, together with your PM and Engineering peers, set strategy by defining the sequence of bets that get us there while earning organizational alignment
- Define excellence. Set the bar for quality, delight, and product excellence by demonstrating and teaching the organization what great looks and feels like. Eschew perfection for learning that propels the product toward your high bar
- Stay deeply connected to users and the work. Plan and execute research to ground design decisions in how families actually behave. Lead from a place of real craft knowledge and hands-on understanding of what it takes to ship
- Operate with agency. Don't wait for permission. Create the conditions for your and your team's success. Bias toward action, starting before you have the full picture and bringing others along as you learn. Hold yourself and others accountable and avoid attributing setbacks to external conditions
- Serve as a model for AI-first Design at Babylist. Use AI-native workflows in your own work, ship things yourself, and help define the rituals and practices that the rest of the function will adopt
- Scale design democratization. Build AI-enabled workflows that bring others into design tools, creating the conditions for non-designers to contribute meaningfully to the experience layer. Act as a consultant and quality bar on that work, not a gatekeeper
- Build a high-performing design team. Hire, develop, retain, and organize designers that execute with speed and quality. Create a growth-mindset-fueled environment where designers do their best work. Manage performance directly and invest in the career growth of everyone on your team
- Multiply your team. Be an excellent partner to engineering, product management, analytics, marketing, and merchandising leaders as co-builders to move the highest-impact work forward. Bring tighter problem framing, sharper user insight, and prototypes that make decisions easier to make
- Contribute to the shape of the Consumer Tech organization. Work with the VP of Product Design, your peers, and other leaders across Tech to evolve our operating model, our hiring bar, and our craft standards as the team transitions
Our take
Since its 2011 launch, Babylist has grown into one of the most highly rated baby registries in the US. The difference it offers is that it allows users to include products from any store in their registries. On top of this, the company’s model also focuses heavily on creating informational content, which allows it to generate ad revenue while building customer loyalty.
Originally scaled with fairly low venture funding, Babylist claims half of new parents in the US now use its services. This, given that the baby products industry is worth close to $90 billion, shows the company's immense growth and speaks to the impact it has made in the space.
Babylist has seen strong funding in the past, which has fuelled projects such as the launch of virtual showrooms and further expanded the company's presence. The company acquired Expectful, a health and wellness tool, in 2023 with the long-term vision of combining the two companies into a larger health and wellness media property that can help people navigate all aspects of parenthood from fertility to diapers.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Led by a woman
Top investors
67% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (1 round)
Nov 2021
$40m
SERIES C
Total funding: $40m
Company benefits
- HAPPIER WEEKENDS – We work to live, not live to work. That means we generally don’t work nights or weekends, and we offer 10 paid holidays throughout the year, in addition to your paid time off.
- PAID TIME OFF THAT WORKS FOR YOU – Life is unpredictable. Use your time off for what you need, whether that’s a vacation, family event or a day to unplug.
- PARENTAL LEAVE – We offer a flexible, 12-week paid parental leave policy.
- FLEXIBLE BENEFITS – Choose from benefits that support your working style, whether that's remote, in the office or something in between.
- HEALTH & WELLNESS – Wellness benefits include 100% paid coverage for medical, vision and dental for full-time employees.
- BABYLIST STORE DISCOUNT – All full-time employees receive a generous Babylist Store discount.
Company HQ
Emeryville, CA
Leadership
Natalie Gordon
(Founder & CEO)Former Software Engineer at Amazon. Initially founded Babylist as a side project and has since taken the company to a market leading status.
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