Principal Product Designer, Core

Chess.com is one of the largest gaming sites in the world and the #1 platform for playing, learning, and enjoying chess. They are seeking a Principal Product Designer to work on core Chess.com experiences used by millions of players every day, helping to design and build important features that define the online chess experience.

Responsibilities:

• Own the design of core Chess.com product experiences
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Copywriters, and leadership to help define the problem and build effective product experiences together
• Design polished, intuitive interfaces for web and mobile using Chess.com’s design system
• Present your design proposals and clearly articulate your decisions, backing them up with contextual rationale, heuristics, and user insights where possible
• Build interactive prototypes to share and quickly test ideas using agentic tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and Figma Make
• Own your projects from initial concept through to implementation and help ensure design-to-code alignment throughout the process
• Identify and drive systemic design improvements. Not just feature-level polish, but changes that improve consistency, scalability, and quality across the entire product
• Lead design critique, mentor other designers, and consistently raise the craft bar across the whole team

Requirements:

• 10+ years designing consumer-facing products or games, ideally with a large, active user base
• A portfolio of your best design work that demonstrates an expertise of interface and user experience design, including examples of work that influenced product direction or elevated a design team's output
• Mastery of UI design fundamentals including typography, color, layout, visual hierarchy, alignment, contrast, and interactivity
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills that allow you to document and explain your design decisions
• Ability to influence decisions across Product, Engineering, and leadership
• A track record of teaching and applying these standards at a team level
• Leveraging agentic tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and Figma Make in your design process
• A sense of ownership, pride, and responsibility for your craft
• A love for the game of Chess and knowledge of our product
• Experience designing games or game-like consumer products
• Examples of using motion and micro-interactions that add delight and elevate the product
• Frontend or design engineering experience (web, iOS, or Android)
• Experience evolving or scaling a design system across a large product