Principal Designer

About the role

<div class="content-intro"><h4><strong>Help make the world more hospitable </strong></h4> <p>The hospitality industry is uniquely human, and it deserves technology that’s just as inspiring as the people behind it. At Mews, we’re transforming the industry with a platform that helps hotels run smarter, move faster and create better guest experiences.</p> <p>You’ll work with smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. You’ll have autonomy and the trust to make good decisions and move quickly. And you’ll enjoy a real sense of purpose as you see the impact of what we’re building.</p> <p>If you’re motivated by ownership, curiosity and meaningful impact, and are driven to deliver consistent high performance, you’ll feel at home here.</p> <h4><strong>About the role</strong></h4> <p>Let's get into the specifics. It’s impossible to capture every nuance of a role – especially at a rapidly growing company like Mews – but if we had to distil it into a job description (which we do because this is a job description), it would be this:</p></div><p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">The design choices made at the system level right now will shape what every product tribe at Mews can build for years. This role owns that layer: the design system, cross-tribe agents and skills, research engines, and the architectural standards that make coherent design possible at scale across a division moving fast in multiple directions simultaneously.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">Most Principal Designers sit inside a tribe and own a product surface. This one sits above all of them and owns the foundation they run on. The opportunity is to build something that outlasts any single project or initiative, at a point in the hospitality industry where the decisions made now genuinely matter.</p> <h4 class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"><strong>What you would do</strong> </h4> <ul class="[li_&amp;]:mb-0 [li_&amp;]:mt-1 [li_&amp;]:gap-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ul]:pb-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ol]:pb-1 list-disc flex flex-col gap-1 pl-8 mb-3 print:block print:space-y-1"> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Build and maintain the design foundation across the division: the design system, cross-tribe agents and skills, research and discovery engines, design architecture, guidelines, and standards</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Hold the multi-year view — write clearly about what design across the division will need that it doesn't yet have, and drive toward it with enough conviction to see it through</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Build AI-powered agents, skills, and tooling that encode design judgment into reusable systems rather than one-off artifacts tied to a single project</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Work with Staff Designers so that tribe-level design substrates compose into a coherent whole rather than a collection of parallel efforts</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Partner with the VP on the most complex cross-tribe design problems — the ones that don't fit inside any single tribe's scope</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Contribute craft feedback and calibration input into Director and Staff Designer performance reviews</li> </ul> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"><strong>AI Fluency Level 4:</strong> In this role, that means you've shipped AI-powered systems, not just integrated AI into your own workflow. You'll be responsible for building the agentic design tooling and AI skills that the entire design division runs on — agents that encode judgment, research engines that scale discovery, and systems that other designers use without necessarily knowing you built them. You understand the underlying components well enough to make real architectural decisions about them.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"><em>For more information on AI fluency at Mews, please refer to "<a href="https://mews.atlassian.net/wiki/external/YWI5ZGUyMGQ3MjU2NGRmNjlkZGEyYTg2NTVmZGE0OTU">AI Fluency at Mews: A Comprehensive Guide for Candidates</a>" on Confluence.</em></p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"><strong>What you would bring</strong></p> <ul> <li class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">A body of shipped, high-quality design work and demonstrable taste — senior enough to be credible across multiple tribes without needing to prove it</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">Multi-year thinking and the ability to encode it into systems and agents that outlast any single initiative</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">Genuine satisfaction in cross-tribe substrate work — the problems that don't carry a team's name on them</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">AI Fluency Level 4 or the equivalent: you've built AI-powered products or systems, understand the components well enough to make architectural decisions about them, and have shipped something where AI is a core part of what it does</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">Ability to operate as a multiplier for a VP without the title or formal authority that typically comes with that level of influence</li> </ul> <p><strong>Nice to have</strong> </p> <ul class="[li_&amp;]:mb-0 [li_&amp;]:mt-1 [li_&amp;]:gap-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ul]:pb-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ol]:pb-1 list-disc flex flex-col gap-1 pl-8 mb-3 print:block print:space-y-1"> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Experience maintaining a design system used across