Principal Designer Jobs in California
Principal Designer jobs in California are among the most active in the country, concentrated in technology, entertainment, consumer products, and architecture across a field that ranges from junior contributors stepping into senior design roles to directors overseeing multi-team systems. The largest hiring hubs are San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Jose, where companies like Apple, Google, and Netflix have deep, ongoing principal designer teams. The most in-demand specialties are product design systems, user experience leadership, and architectural project design. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Showing 5 of 38+ Principal Designer jobs
About Gen
Gen is a global company dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its trusted consumer brands including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, MoneyLion and more. Our combined heritage is rooted in financial empowerment and cyber safety for the first digital generations, and today we deliver award-winning cybersecurity, online privacy, identity protection and financial wellness solutions to nearly 500 million users in more than 150 countries.
Together, we share a collective passion and vision to protect consumers and help them grow, manage and secure their digital and financial lives. We're always looking for smart, fearless and high-impact talent who see AI as a teammate – leveraging it to move faster and deliver meaningful results.
When you're part of Gen, you'll have the flexibility, tools and support to do your best work and grow your career – from flexible working options and time off to competitive pay, benefits and well-being programs.
At Gen, we are scrappy and relentlessly customer driven. We create room for healthy debate, experimentation and continuous learning, and we seek out people with different experiences, identities and ideas to join our team. You'll work with people who back each other, respect each other and understand that our differences are a competitive advantage.
If this sounds like you, we'd love you to be part of Gen.
About the Role
Gen's AI & Innovation team is building the next generation of consumer experiences powered by AI. The team brings ideas from zero to one, ships them to real customers, and learns quickly what to scale. Current work centers on browser-based products, including Norton Neo, our AI Browser, as well as agentic apps and other emerging products across the portfolio.
As a Principal Product Designer, AI & Innovation, you'll be a senior design leader and trusted partner across multiple products in the portfolio, with a primary focus on Norton Neo and other browser-based experiences. At times, you'll own a product or major initiative end to end; at others, you'll act as a force multiplier—helping other designers raise the quality, coherence, and impact of their work. You'll move fluidly between shipped products that need iteration and new concepts that need a first shape, bringing a high bar for customer experience and execution to each.
You'll partner closely with product, engineering, research, marketing, and other cross-functional leaders to shape how AI-powered products feel and work at Gen. The patterns, principles, and practices you help establish for one product should make the broader portfolio—and the design team—stronger.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead end-to-end product design for high-impact initiatives across the AI & Innovation portfolio, from framing and concept through launch, learning, and iteration; take direct ownership when the work calls for it.
- Design intuitive, trustworthy experiences for AI-powered browsers, agentic apps, and other emerging products, including navigation, agent behavior, conversational flows, onboarding, and the moments when AI takes action on a user's behalf.
- Shape reusable product patterns, principles, and a shared design language across the AI & Innovation portfolio so learning from one product accelerates the next.
- Bring clarity to ambiguous problems through strong framing, low-fidelity concepts, prototypes, and experiments that create shared understanding and enable fast learning.
- Partner with product, engineering, research, and business stakeholders to turn complex opportunities into clear, polished, production-ready experiences.
- Collaborate with marketing, customer experience, and other partners on launch experiences and customer-facing touchpoints across the portfolio.
- Use AI-assisted design tools, generative prototyping, and emerging workflows to increase design velocity, explore more possibilities, and help the team learn faster.
- Maintain consistency with Gen's design system while evolving patterns for browser, agentic, and AI-first interactions across multiple surfaces.
- Use research, usability testing, product data, and direct customer insight to validate decisions and improve experiences for diverse consumer audiences.
- Set a high bar for design quality; clearly communicate rationale, tradeoffs, and decisions; and give thoughtful feedback that helps other designers and partners do their best work.
About You
Education
Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field; equivalent practical experience will be considered.
Experience
7+ years of experience in product/UX design, including a track record of shipping high-quality consumer web or software products; experience with browsers, AI-powered, conversational, or agentic experiences is a strong plus.
Skills
- Exceptional end-to-end product design skills across strategy, UX, interaction, visual design, and prototyping, with a portfolio demonstrating shipped consumer products and meaningful product impact.
- Advanced proficiency in Figma and modern design/prototyping tools, with curiosity and fluency in AI-assisted design tools and workflows.
- Experience designing clear, trustworthy, and human-centered interactions for AI, automation, permissions, or systems that take action on a user's behalf.
- Ability to work within and evolve a mature design system across products and surfaces while knowing when a new pattern or approach is needed.
- Comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment and making sound decisions across concurrent initiatives, shifting between deep ownership and portfolio-level support.
- Strong collaboration, facilitation, and communication skills, with the ability to influence product direction and align senior cross-functional partners.
Personal Attributes
- Senior, self-directed designer who can independently lead a complex product or initiative while also raising the quality and effectiveness of the broader design team.
- Passion for building trustworthy, human-centered AI experiences that are useful, understandable, and respectful of everyday consumers.
- Comfort with undefined problems, evolving priorities, and the reality that some promising work will become learning rather than a shipped product.
- Generous design partner who shares context, mentors through craft and critique, and helps create a culture of high standards, experimentation, and continuous learning.
What's Next
After you submit your application, you can expect the following steps in the recruitment process:
- TA Call
- Portfolio Review
- Design Exercise / Live Design Session (Virtual)
- Final Interview – Hiring Manager (Virtual or face-to-face)
Compensation Range: $200K - $240K
About Gen
Gen is a global company dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its trusted consumer brands including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, MoneyLion and more. Our combined heritage is rooted in financial empowerment and cyber safety for the first digital generations, and today we deliver award-winning cybersecurity, online privacy, identity protection and financial wellness solutions to nearly 500 million users in more than 150 countries.
Together, we share a collective passion and vision to protect consumers and help them grow, manage and secure their digital and financial lives. We're always looking for smart, fearless and high-impact talent who see AI as a teammate – leveraging it to move faster and deliver meaningful results.
When you're part of Gen, you'll have the flexibility, tools and support to do your best work and grow your career – from flexible working options and time off to competitive pay, benefits and well-being programs.
At Gen, we are scrappy and relentlessly customer driven. We create room for healthy debate, experimentation and continuous learning, and we seek out people with different experiences, identities and ideas to join our team. You'll work with people who back each other, respect each other and understand that our differences are a competitive advantage.
If this sounds like you, we'd love you to be part of Gen.
About the Role
Gen's AI & Innovation team is building the next generation of consumer experiences powered by AI. The team brings ideas from zero to one, ships them to real customers, and learns quickly what to scale. Current work centers on browser-based products, including Norton Neo, our AI Browser, as well as agentic apps and other emerging products across the portfolio.
As a Principal Product Designer, AI & Innovation, you'll be a senior design leader and trusted partner across multiple products in the portfolio, with a primary focus on Norton Neo and other browser-based experiences. At times, you'll own a product or major initiative end to end; at others, you'll act as a force multiplier—helping other designers raise the quality, coherence, and impact of their work. You'll move fluidly between shipped products that need iteration and new concepts that need a first shape, bringing a high bar for customer experience and execution to each.
You'll partner closely with product, engineering, research, marketing, and other cross-functional leaders to shape how AI-powered products feel and work at Gen. The patterns, principles, and practices you help establish for one product should make the broader portfolio—and the design team—stronger.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead end-to-end product design for high-impact initiatives across the AI & Innovation portfolio, from framing and concept through launch, learning, and iteration; take direct ownership when the work calls for it.
- Design intuitive, trustworthy experiences for AI-powered browsers, agentic apps, and other emerging products, including navigation, agent behavior, conversational flows, onboarding, and the moments when AI takes action on a user's behalf.
- Shape reusable product patterns, principles, and a shared design language across the AI & Innovation portfolio so learning from one product accelerates the next.
- Bring clarity to ambiguous problems through strong framing, low-fidelity concepts, prototypes, and experiments that create shared understanding and enable fast learning.
- Partner with product, engineering, research, and business stakeholders to turn complex opportunities into clear, polished, production-ready experiences.
- Collaborate with marketing, customer experience, and other partners on launch experiences and customer-facing touchpoints across the portfolio.
- Use AI-assisted design tools, generative prototyping, and emerging workflows to increase design velocity, explore more possibilities, and help the team learn faster.
- Maintain consistency with Gen's design system while evolving patterns for browser, agentic, and AI-first interactions across multiple surfaces.
- Use research, usability testing, product data, and direct customer insight to validate decisions and improve experiences for diverse consumer audiences.
- Set a high bar for design quality; clearly communicate rationale, tradeoffs, and decisions; and give thoughtful feedback that helps other designers and partners do their best work.
About You
Education
Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field; equivalent practical experience will be considered.
Experience
7+ years of experience in product/UX design, including a track record of shipping high-quality consumer web or software products; experience with browsers, AI-powered, conversational, or agentic experiences is a strong plus.
Skills
- Exceptional end-to-end product design skills across strategy, UX, interaction, visual design, and prototyping, with a portfolio demonstrating shipped consumer products and meaningful product impact.
- Advanced proficiency in Figma and modern design/prototyping tools, with curiosity and fluency in AI-assisted design tools and workflows.
- Experience designing clear, trustworthy, and human-centered interactions for AI, automation, permissions, or systems that take action on a user's behalf.
- Ability to work within and evolve a mature design system across products and surfaces while knowing when a new pattern or approach is needed.
- Comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment and making sound decisions across concurrent initiatives, shifting between deep ownership and portfolio-level support.
- Strong collaboration, facilitation, and communication skills, with the ability to influence product direction and align senior cross-functional partners.
Personal Attributes
- Senior, self-directed designer who can independently lead a complex product or initiative while also raising the quality and effectiveness of the broader design team.
- Passion for building trustworthy, human-centered AI experiences that are useful, understandable, and respectful of everyday consumers.
- Comfort with undefined problems, evolving priorities, and the reality that some promising work will become learning rather than a shipped product.
- Generous design partner who shares context, mentors through craft and critique, and helps create a culture of high standards, experimentation, and continuous learning.
What's Next
After you submit your application, you can expect the following steps in the recruitment process:
- TA Call
- Portfolio Review
- Design Exercise / Live Design Session (Virtual)
- Final Interview – Hiring Manager (Virtual or face-to-face)
Compensation Range: $200K - $240K
See All 38 Principal Designer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Principal Designer JobsPrincipal Designer Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Principal Designer Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Electronics & Hardware
- Education
- Telecommunications
- Aerospace & Defense
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in principal designer jobs across California.
- Portfolio demonstrating end-to-end design ownership across multiple shipped California-based products or projects
- Bachelor's or master's degree in industrial design, architecture, graphic design, or a closely related field
- Seven or more years of progressive design experience with at least two years in a lead or staff designer role
- Proven ability to define and maintain design systems used across cross-functional product teams
- Experience collaborating with engineering, product management, and executive stakeholders in a matrixed California organization
- Proficiency in Figma, Sketch, or equivalent design tooling with demonstrated systems-level thinking
Principal Designer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a principal designer in California?
Becoming a principal designer in California typically requires a bachelor's degree in design, architecture, or a related field, followed by years of progressively senior design work. For architectural principal designers, California requires licensure through the California Architects Board, which administers the Architect Registration Examination. For product and UX principal designers, there is no state license, but a strong portfolio of shipped work, demonstrated design leadership, and familiarity with California's tech and entertainment industries are the practical requirements most hiring managers look for.
Which companies hire principal designers in California?
Employers hiring principal designers in California right now include Walmart, Fivetran, and Raytheon, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. California's concentration of technology headquarters, major entertainment studios, and large consumer product companies means principal designer demand is spread across multiple industries rather than concentrated in a single sector.
Which California cities have the most principal designer jobs?
Los Angeles, Santa Clara, and San Francisco have the most principal designer openings in California. San Francisco and San Jose draw the largest share because of the density of technology company headquarters in the Bay Area, while Los Angeles is the center of entertainment, media, and consumer brand design, making each city's openings reflect the dominant industry behind them.
Are there remote principal designer jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most design fields. About 58% of principal designer openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting the role's strong overlap with technology companies that normalized distributed work. The parts of the role most likely to remain remote are UX systems design and product design leadership, while architecture and physical product design typically require some on-site presence.
How can I get hired as a principal designer in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is through an associate or mid-level designer role at a California technology company or design agency, where promotion to principal is possible within a few years. Large California employers like Apple and Google run structured new-graduate design programs that feed into their senior design pipelines. Building a portfolio of speculative or freelance systems-level work, earning a California Architects Board license if pursuing architectural design, or moving laterally from a senior UX or product design role gives candidates a concrete competitive edge.
Where can I find and apply to principal designer jobs in California?
You can find and apply to principal designer jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings across the state. Find the roles that fit your background and apply directly from each listing.
See All 38 Principal Designer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Principal Designer Jobs