J-1 Visa Principal Designer Jobs
Principal Designer roles in the United States are accessible to international professionals through the J-1 visa, most commonly under the Trainee or Specialist program category. A designated sponsor organization issues your DS-2019 and administers sponsorship, while the U.S. design studio or firm acts as your host employer.
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Get Access To All JobsAbout Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 400,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.
About The Role
Are you looking for an opportunity to transform a business? Gusto is looking for a strategic, customer-focused leader to leverage customer feedback and operational key metrics to develop actionable insights and strategies that shape our product and service, and positively impact customer love. Working with the Product, Engineering, Design and Customer Experience teams, you will be expected to tackle both highly strategic and deeply operational initiatives to deliver value for customers and Gusto. You’ll be customer-obsessed, business-minded, strategic, detail-oriented, and highly creative. In this role, you'll help stand up the operational and service foundation for a new Gusto product, using both deep human judgment and emerging AI tools to move faster and make better decisions. If this sounds exciting to you, we’d love to connect!
About The Team
The Benefits Product Operations team at Gusto is made up of committed, creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to enable Benefits for all small and mid-sized businesses and their employees. We’re a highly cross-functional team focused on ensuring our product and service are co-designed and co-developed along the product lifecycle to deliver a best in class customer experience; Gusto is listening to, synthesizing and acting on customer and front-line team feedback; and that cross-functional teams are collaborating and swimming together to build the best version of Gusto for our customers.
Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day
- Shape and support product development and its integration into service strategy for existing customers across the product lifecycle, in collaboration with Engineering, Design, Product Management, and Customer Experience teams.
- Understand our product and end-to-end service experience and organizations in intimate detail, including internal and external pain points and feedback. Collaborate to ensure customer support considerations are integrated into broader company decisions.
- Lead and partner on product launches between Product Management and Customer Experience (CX) teams to ensure readiness and deliver insights post-launch to ensure a positive experience for customers and internal teams.
- Provide business insights and recommendations based on quantitative and qualitative data to influence strategy and operational design in both product and service roadmaps.
- Identify and drive cross-functional initiatives that will deliver value for customers and Gusto. Help develop and communicate a clear roadmap for enhancing service capabilities and experiences.
- Hypothesis-driven problem solving to drive our business.
- Contribute to advancing the Product Operations craft at Gusto and build AI fluency within the team:
- Model how to use AI tools to accelerate service design, insight synthesis, and agent-driven operational workflows.
- Identify and build AI-assisted operational workflows, including agents, to accelerate VoC synthesis, launch readiness monitoring, and cross-functional signal aggregation.
- Use AI tools to prototype service solutions and surface requirements faster, compressing the feedback loop between customer signal and product/service response — before full engineering investment.
Here’s What We're Looking For
- 10+ years of relevant work experience at growing startups in operating roles (i.e., biz ops/strategy roles, product operations, project/program management, and/or consulting):
- Experience scaling service strategy alongside growing SaaS products, including incubating products, building and managing product betas, and/or integrating new products into a scalable best-in-class service model.
- Highly adaptable and resilient to changes in business needs or requirements, with the ability to navigate challenges and make decisions even when information is incomplete.
- Demonstrated self-starter and organized problem-solver. Self-sufficient, resourceful, and bias for action towards continuous improvement.
- Experienced with managing a variety of cross-functional stakeholders on complex strategic initiatives, including influencing senior leaders in Product or Customer Experience orgs.
- Strong data literacy and results-orientation, with the ability to identify the right questions, interpret quantitative and qualitative signals, and translate findings into decisions — including comfort using AI-assisted tools for analysis and synthesis.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to effectively communicate complex subjects to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Demonstrated AI fluency in an operational and product context — comfort using AI tools to synthesize qualitative data, identify automation opportunities in service workflows, and building or directing AI agents to reduce manual operational lift:
- Experience prototyping with AI (e.g., Claude, Cursor, Codex or similar) is a plus.
- Experience with service design and/or service blueprinting.
- Experience working in the healthcare or benefits space (PEO, health insurance, etc.) is a plus; candidates with new product incubation experience in any complex regulated space are strongly encouraged to apply.
Compensation
- Our cash compensation amount for this role is $148,000/yr to $182,000/yr in Denver, and $167,000/yr to $217,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Location
Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.
Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.
Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer. Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.
About Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 400,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.
About The Role
Are you looking for an opportunity to transform a business? Gusto is looking for a strategic, customer-focused leader to leverage customer feedback and operational key metrics to develop actionable insights and strategies that shape our product and service, and positively impact customer love. Working with the Product, Engineering, Design and Customer Experience teams, you will be expected to tackle both highly strategic and deeply operational initiatives to deliver value for customers and Gusto. You’ll be customer-obsessed, business-minded, strategic, detail-oriented, and highly creative. In this role, you'll help stand up the operational and service foundation for a new Gusto product, using both deep human judgment and emerging AI tools to move faster and make better decisions. If this sounds exciting to you, we’d love to connect!
About The Team
The Benefits Product Operations team at Gusto is made up of committed, creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to enable Benefits for all small and mid-sized businesses and their employees. We’re a highly cross-functional team focused on ensuring our product and service are co-designed and co-developed along the product lifecycle to deliver a best in class customer experience; Gusto is listening to, synthesizing and acting on customer and front-line team feedback; and that cross-functional teams are collaborating and swimming together to build the best version of Gusto for our customers.
Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day
- Shape and support product development and its integration into service strategy for existing customers across the product lifecycle, in collaboration with Engineering, Design, Product Management, and Customer Experience teams.
- Understand our product and end-to-end service experience and organizations in intimate detail, including internal and external pain points and feedback. Collaborate to ensure customer support considerations are integrated into broader company decisions.
- Lead and partner on product launches between Product Management and Customer Experience (CX) teams to ensure readiness and deliver insights post-launch to ensure a positive experience for customers and internal teams.
- Provide business insights and recommendations based on quantitative and qualitative data to influence strategy and operational design in both product and service roadmaps.
- Identify and drive cross-functional initiatives that will deliver value for customers and Gusto. Help develop and communicate a clear roadmap for enhancing service capabilities and experiences.
- Hypothesis-driven problem solving to drive our business.
- Contribute to advancing the Product Operations craft at Gusto and build AI fluency within the team:
- Model how to use AI tools to accelerate service design, insight synthesis, and agent-driven operational workflows.
- Identify and build AI-assisted operational workflows, including agents, to accelerate VoC synthesis, launch readiness monitoring, and cross-functional signal aggregation.
- Use AI tools to prototype service solutions and surface requirements faster, compressing the feedback loop between customer signal and product/service response — before full engineering investment.
Here’s What We're Looking For
- 10+ years of relevant work experience at growing startups in operating roles (i.e., biz ops/strategy roles, product operations, project/program management, and/or consulting):
- Experience scaling service strategy alongside growing SaaS products, including incubating products, building and managing product betas, and/or integrating new products into a scalable best-in-class service model.
- Highly adaptable and resilient to changes in business needs or requirements, with the ability to navigate challenges and make decisions even when information is incomplete.
- Demonstrated self-starter and organized problem-solver. Self-sufficient, resourceful, and bias for action towards continuous improvement.
- Experienced with managing a variety of cross-functional stakeholders on complex strategic initiatives, including influencing senior leaders in Product or Customer Experience orgs.
- Strong data literacy and results-orientation, with the ability to identify the right questions, interpret quantitative and qualitative signals, and translate findings into decisions — including comfort using AI-assisted tools for analysis and synthesis.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to effectively communicate complex subjects to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Demonstrated AI fluency in an operational and product context — comfort using AI tools to synthesize qualitative data, identify automation opportunities in service workflows, and building or directing AI agents to reduce manual operational lift:
- Experience prototyping with AI (e.g., Claude, Cursor, Codex or similar) is a plus.
- Experience with service design and/or service blueprinting.
- Experience working in the healthcare or benefits space (PEO, health insurance, etc.) is a plus; candidates with new product incubation experience in any complex regulated space are strongly encouraged to apply.
Compensation
- Our cash compensation amount for this role is $148,000/yr to $182,000/yr in Denver, and $167,000/yr to $217,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Location
Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.
Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.
Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer. Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.
See all 14+ Principal Designer jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Principal Designer roles.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding J-1 Visa Sponsorship as a Principal Designer
Align your portfolio to specialty occupation standards
J-1 Trainee and Specialist categories require demonstrated expertise in a defined field. Structure your portfolio around systems design, design leadership, and cross-functional strategy work rather than generalist output, so your host employer can substantiate your program category to the designated sponsor.
Verify host employer eligibility before accepting offers
Not every design studio is registered to host J-1 exchange visitors. Before advancing in an interview process, confirm the employer has an existing relationship with a State Department-designated sponsor organization or is willing to establish one through USCIS-recognized channels.
Distinguish Trainee from Specialist category requirements
The Trainee category applies if you have a relevant degree plus one year of experience, or five years of experience without a degree. Specialist requires at least five years in a specialized field. The distinction affects your DS-2019 eligibility and the designated sponsor your host employer must work with.
Search for J-1-compatible design roles on Migrate Mate
Use Migrate Mate to filter for U.S. employers and Principal Designer positions that align with J-1 sponsorship pathways. The platform surfaces roles where international hiring is part of the employer's workflow, saving you from outreach to firms with no structured sponsorship process.
Prepare a detailed training plan before your offer stage
Designated sponsors require a formal training plan outlining your learning objectives, supervision structure, and weekly design activities. Draft this document with your prospective host employer early, because sponsors like Cultural Vistas or AIPT will review and approve it before issuing your DS-2019.
Confirm the two-year home residency rule applies to your profile
Some J-1 participants are subject to a two-year home-country physical presence requirement before changing to certain U.S. visa statuses. Your country of origin, funding source, and skills list designation all affect whether this requirement applies to you as a Principal Designer.
Principal Designer jobs are hiring across the US. Find yours.
Find Principal Designer JobsPrincipal Designer J-1 Visa: Frequently Asked Questions
Which J-1 program category fits a Principal Designer role?
Most Principal Designer candidates qualify under the Trainee or Specialist category. Trainee applies to professionals with a relevant degree and at least one year of work experience, or five or more years of progressive experience without a degree. Specialist is the right fit if you have five or more years of expertise in a narrowly defined design discipline, such as product design systems or design operations, and are participating in a program that cannot be replicated in your home country.
Who actually sponsors the J-1 visa for a Principal Designer position?
The J-1 sponsor is a U.S. Department of State-designated organization, such as Cultural Vistas, AIPT, or another approved sponsor, not the hiring employer. The design studio or company where you work is your host employer. The designated sponsor issues your DS-2019, monitors program compliance, and serves as your legal point of contact with the State Department throughout your exchange.
How do I find U.S. design employers open to hosting J-1 exchange visitors?
Migrate Mate is built specifically to help international professionals identify U.S. employers and roles compatible with visa sponsorship pathways, including J-1. Because J-1 hosting requires administrative steps from the employer, targeting companies already familiar with international hiring significantly improves your chances of converting an interview into a structured exchange program placement.
Does the two-year home residency requirement affect Principal Designers?
It can, depending on your situation. The two-year home-country physical presence requirement applies to J-1 participants who received government funding, are nationals of a country designated on the State Department's Exchange Visitor Skills List, or are participating in certain graduate medical or specialized training programs. If the requirement applies, you cannot change to H-1B or a green card pathway until you fulfill it or receive a waiver from the State Department.
What documentation does a Principal Designer need to support a J-1 application?
You'll need a signed DS-2019 from your designated sponsor, evidence of your professional qualifications such as your degree and a portfolio or CV demonstrating progressive design leadership experience, proof of English proficiency, health insurance coverage meeting J-1 minimums, and financial documentation showing you can support yourself during the program. Your host employer and designated sponsor will also complete a formal training plan that outlines your learning objectives and supervision structure for the exchange period.
See which Principal Designer employers are hiring and sponsoring visas right now.
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