Principal Product Designer

About the role

Dropbox's Design team is looking for a Principal Designer to help define the future of content activation for Dropbox customers. In this role, you will help lead the design vision and execution for Dropbox's portfolio of products and services. As a Principal Designer, you will shape how AI helps customers get their jobs done faster, better, and with greater confidence. Dropbox holds the content, context, and collaboration that power our customers' most important work. This role is about designing AI experiences that activate that content in useful, intuitive, and trustworthy ways, helping customers find clarity, make progress, and take action without adding complexity or friction. We believe AI should sharpen our customers, not replace their judgment. You will be responsible for creating experiences where AI acts as a thoughtful partner: surfacing what matters, reducing busywork, connecting ideas, and helping people move from information to action, while keeping customers in control. The best experiences will feel elegant, precise, and almost invisible; AI should make Dropbox more powerful without making it feel more complicated.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Define and drive the design vision for Dropbox's broader multi-product ecosystem that helps customers find, understand, activate, and act on the content already living in Dropbox.
• Design AI-powered experiences that make customers sharper and more effective without replacing their judgment. Ensure AI feels like a trusted partner: reducing friction, surfacing what matters, accelerating decisions, and keeping customers in control.
• Lead ambiguous, high-impact product areas from strategic framing through execution, translating emerging AI capabilities into simple, elegant, high-trust experiences that feel powerful without becoming clunky, noisy, or difficult to use.
• Set an exceptionally high craft bar across interaction design, information architecture, systems thinking, prototyping, content, visual quality, and implementation. Make the product feel precise, coherent, and unmistakably Dropbox.
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Research, Marketing, and Design leadership to shape not only what we build, but how we build it. This is a critical role for Dropbox's AI-first, multi-product future, and for defining the next generation of product experiences that help customers do their best work.
• Translate emerging AI capabilities into high-trust, "it just works" product experiences, while raising the quality bar for the broader design organization.
• Help transform the team into AI-enabled designers, setting new standards for how we use AI in our own design process, how we prototype, how we explore, and how we deliver customer value.
• Drive the creation of cohesive, end-to-end experiences that span interfaces, content, and workflows, ensuring clarity and consistency across all touchpoints.
• Advocate for the customer at every level, using research insights, data, and qualitative signals to inform design decisions and prioritize trade-offs.
• Mentor and inspire other designers, providing guidance, feedback, and leadership that elevates the entire design organization's capabilities.

Requirements

• Must have extensive experience in product design, with a strong track record of designing complex digital products and leading design strategy.
• Must be highly proficient in design tools and workflows, demonstrating exceptional craft in interaction, visual, and systems design.
• Must have a deep understanding of user-centered design principles, accessibility, and information architecture, with the ability to translate ambiguous problems into clear design solutions.
• Must be comfortable working in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment and driving forward without needing perfect conditions.
• Must have strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders and articulate design rationale clearly and persuasively.
• Must have experience collaborating closely with cross-functional partners including product managers, engineers, researchers, and marketers.
• Must be detail-oriented and able to manage multiple priorities while maintaining a high standard of quality and consistency in design outputs.
• Must be committed to continuous learning and staying current with industry trends, tools, and best practices in product design and AI.

Practical notes

• Hours, travel, visa, or deadlines are specified in the source and must be respected if present. No additional details are added.

Word count: approximately 850 words