Principal Product Designer

Who we are

Employment Hero is on a mission to make employment easier and more valuable for everyone. Our Employment Operating System brings hiring, HR, payroll and benefits into an all-in-one solution. 

Since our inception in 2014, we’ve scaled to a $2 billion valuation and gained a presence in 6 countries globally - Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, the UK and Canada. We now service over 300,000 businesses and more than 2 million employees. 

The EH Way

At Employment Hero, we’re proud of our unique DNA, which we call The EH Way.  

1. We are Mission First - everything we do (from what we work on, to how we allocate capital and where we focus) is driven by our Mission
2. We are Remote First - we champion a remote environment with a preference for asynchronous communication and a high degree of autonomy 
3. We are AI First - we are committed to using AI to accelerate our mission; AI is not just a tool, it’s a fundamental part of how we operate, innovate, and scale
4. We are Apolitical - we do not take a position on political or social topics, unless it relates to our Mission
5. We Live by Our Values - we role model our values 100% of the time
6. We Expect High Performance - we set a high standard and we’re not satisfied with being average

This role 

We’re looking for a Principal Product Designer (6 month FTC) to join our team as a senior individual contributor (no direct reports), In this role you’ll solve complex problems and uphold quality for key cross-squad domains, partnering with Product and Engineering leaders to shape the future of our product.

You’ll work on the hardest, most ambiguous problems we have, create a clear vision and narrative for your domain, and ensure we deliver simple, coherent experiences across multiple teams and surfaces. You will not manage people; you’ll lead through expertise, influence, and hands-on craft.

This role is ideal for someone who is AI-first by default, comfortable solving problems in hours and days instead of only in weekly cycles, and who thrives in an environment that is intentionally process-light.

This is a 6-month full-time contract position.

You will

• Own domains, not tickets
• Take end-to-end ownership of one or more cross-squad domains (e.g. onboarding & activation, payroll & compliance, information architecture & platform navigation).
• Define and maintain quality across all related features and journeys.
• Act as the go-to design partner for Product and Engineering leaders in those areas.
• Proactively drive vision & strategy (beyond the immediate contract)
• Even within a short-term contract, help shape and socialise a UX vision that looks 12–24 months ahead for your domains, including narratives, principles, north-star flows, and “before vs after” stories.
• Identify key areas of interest where system level UX needs solving... and solve it.
• Translate business strategy and customer insights into clear problem statements, opportunities, and UX bets.
• Handle the ugly things
• Take on the gnarliest, most ambiguous, cross-cutting problems where ownership is unclear and where no one “owns” all the pieces.
• Lead discovery, framing, and exploration for complex initiatives, turning messy problem spaces into clear options and trade-offs.
• Work on highly technical or sensitive flows where mistakes are costly (e.g. money movement, compliance, contracts, critical workflows).
• Raise the bar for design quality
• Define what “good” looks like through principles, patterns, examples, and anti-patterns.
• Lead cross-team critiques, design reviews, and pattern reviews; give clear, actionable feedback that lifts the work.
• Pair with Senior and Mid-level designers on their most challenging projects, helping them strengthen their thinking, craft, and storytelling.
• Influence, not manage
• Operate as a senior IC: no direct reports, but a strong voice in how we work and what we ship.
• Mentor designers across teams, supporting other in calibrating quality and expectations.
• Represent Design in cross-functional forums with Product and Engineering leadership, advocating for the customer and long-term product quality.
• Codify structures & patterns
• Contribute to and evolve our information architectures, interaction patterns, and UX frameworks so teams can move faster with confidence.
• Ensure teams are using coherent structures and patterns rather than reinventing solutions in isolation.
• Help define guidelines and standards that scale as we grow.

Who you are 

To thrive at Employment Hero, you’ll need to embody The EH Way - operating with focus, agility, and an obsession with impact. For this role, you’ll also bring

• You’re an experienced product designer who’s operated at a Principal/Staff/Lead IC level in complex product environments.
• You’re as comfortable in the weeds of interaction design as you are in a room full of directors debating strategy.
• Have 10+ years of experience in product/UX design (or equivalent impact), with a strong IC track record.
• Have owned complex, cross-team domains and made them simpler and clearer for customers.
• Are excellent at framing problems - you structure ambiguity, clarify trade-offs, and help teams focus on what matters.
• Prefer to solve in hours or days when possible, rather than waiting for dogmatic weekly cycles.
• Can thrive in a process-light environment by design.
• Can move between high-level vision and low-level detail, and know when to do which.
• Communicate clearly and persuasively with designers, PMs, engineers, and executives.
• Enjoy mentoring and levelling up others, without needing to manage them.
• Care deeply about execution quality - information architecture, flows, edge cases, states, microcopy, and interaction details.

• A portfolio demonstrating end-to-end ownership of complex product work.
• Experience working in multi-squad or multi-product environments with lots of dependencies.
• Strong interaction design and UX skills - ability to design flows that balance simplicity with real-world complexity.
• Experience partnering closely with Product and Engineering leadership and influencing roadmaps.
• Comfortable running workshops, critiques, and design reviews with senior stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication, including storytelling with artefacts (docs, maps, diagrams, decks).
• Demonstrable experience using AI tools in your design practice (and ideally in shipped product experiences).

How we work

• Design, Product, and Engineering operate as true partners - we expect you to be at the table early, not just at the end.
• We value evidence-informed decisions: qualitative research, analytics, experimentation, and customer feedback.
• We optimise for impact over output - solving the right problems in the right way matters more than shipping more screens.
• We are intentionally process-light
• We prefer clear ownership, fast iteration, and shared context over heavyweight rituals.
• We expect you to help us stay lean while still raising the bar.

What we can offer

At Employment Hero, we don’t just talk about a better way to work - we live it. Joining Employment Hero means

• You will work remotely, with the flexibility to own your time and impact
• You will access cutting-edge tools to amplify your work, knowledge and outputs 
• You’ll surround yourself with ambitious, outcome-driven colleagues who challenge you to do the best work of your life
• You’ll own ESOP (employee share options) in one of the world’s fastest-growing tech companies 
• You’ll also have access to a wide range of benefits that includes - a very generous parental leave policy, subsidised egg freezing (so you can make the choice that’s right for you, on your terms), a WFH office expense budget, and outstanding learning & development opportunities 

At Employment Hero, we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your application data. To understand how we do so, you can read our Applicant Privacy Policy here employmenthero.com/legals/applicant-policy/

Employment Hero celebrates diverse perspectives and experiences, we invite people of all backgrounds and identities to apply for this position.