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>&nbsp;</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

Skills