Principal Jobs in Mountain View, CA
Principal jobs in Mountain View are concentrated in the Castro Street corridor, the Caltrain-adjacent tech campuses near Rengstorff Avenue, and the North Bayshore office parks, with the heaviest demand coming from enterprise software, edtech, and semiconductor design. Employers hiring right now include Intuit, Microsoft, and Inworld AI. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
Find Principal JobsOverview
Showing 4 of 776+ Principal 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 776+ Principal Jobs in Mountain View
Find roles in Mountain View that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Principal JobsPrincipal Job Market in Mountain View
Who's Hiring
- Intuit459
- Microsoft88
- Inworld AI71
- General Motors35
- Glean Technologies35
Top Industries Hiring
- Automotive35
- Technology & Software35
- Electronics & Hardware35
- Banking & Financial Services35
Principal Jobs in Mountain View: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a principal job in Mountain View?
Focus your search on Mountain View's dense concentration of mid-to-large technology companies along North Shoreline Boulevard and the North Bayshore area, where principal-level roles in engineering, product, and design appear most frequently. Candidates who stand out typically bring cross-functional leadership experience within a product-driven or platform environment. Attending local meetups tied to the Silicon Valley tech scene and building relationships at Mountain View-based companies gives you a concrete edge over remote applicants.
Which companies hire principals in Mountain View?
Employers hiring principals in Mountain View right now include Intuit, Microsoft, and Inworld AI, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. Mountain View's employer base skews toward established technology and software companies with the headcount to sustain dedicated principal-level contributors across multiple disciplines.
Are there remote principal jobs in Mountain View?
Yes, though availability depends heavily on the type of principal role. Hands-on positions in hardware, lab operations, or facilities management are almost always on-site, while principal roles in software engineering, product strategy, and data science lean more remote-compatible. About 89% of principal openings tied to Mountain View are remote or hybrid as of September 2026. Strategic and analytical principal functions are the most likely to offer schedule flexibility in Mountain View.
How can I get a principal job in Mountain View with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is targeting senior individual contributor roles at Mountain View's mid-size software or platform companies, where the step up to principal is faster than at larger organizations. Look for staff engineer, senior product manager, or lead designer openings at growth-stage companies near Castro Street and the Caltrain corridor, then build toward principal by owning a high-visibility project. Demonstrating scope ownership and cross-team influence matters more than tenure.
Which industries hire the most principals in Mountain View?
Most principal openings in Mountain View sit in Automotive, Technology & Software, and Electronics & Hardware, per current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. Mountain View's position at the center of Silicon Valley means those sectors maintain a particularly high ratio of senior and principal-level roles relative to entry-level positions, sustaining consistent demand.
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